HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-G OS S T P. 



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because the flowers always turn their faces towards 

 the sun. The great sunflower {Heliaiithus aniiuus) 

 came originally from Peru, where the inhabitants 

 worshipped the sun; and these,'his faithful followers, 

 were held in high honour, and used to adorn temples. 

 The flower, with its golden face and brilliant rays, 

 looks as if constant gazing has transformed it into 

 a likeness of the sun itself, and it is still considered 

 as an emblem of the Christian faith, ever looking 

 towards heaven. 



The name cereals, which is given to all grains, is 

 from Ceres, the goddess of fruits, from the care she 

 ■was supposed to take in producing and preserving 

 these useful plants. The well-known fable of the 

 detention of her daughter Proserpine, by Pluto, for 

 six mouths in tbe year, in the infernal regions, and 

 her liberation for a similar period, poetically 

 describes the seed of corn lying buried all the 

 winter, underground and out of sight, and rising in 

 the spring into the light and sunshine, where it 

 remains until the harvest. Those flowers which 

 open their blossoms after sunset were sacred, as the 

 torches with which Proserpine was sought by her 

 mother in the lower regions. 



This intensely poetic appreciation of nature 

 appears everywhere in the annals of the ancients, 

 and must have given to their lives an interest which 

 is lacking in the present day to the many, by whom 

 she is neither observed nor studied. In those old 

 times they were not content with merely using and 

 enjoying the produce of the earth, but they delighted 

 to personify the trees and flowers which were of so 

 much service to them, and to express their gratitude 

 by acts of worship and sacrifice connected with 

 them, blindly giving to things inanimate the adora- 

 tion they felt was due somewhere. The supersti- 

 tions in many nations, far remote from each other. 

 Lave so much similarity as to indicate a common 

 origin, which we find in the trees of life, and of the 

 knowledge of good and evil, in the garden of Eden^ 

 Eor example, the Scandinavians said that the first 

 man was formed from an ash-tree ; and they 

 worshipped the ash, which they called Yggdrasil, 

 the tree of the universe. This tree was represented 

 having roots spreading towards heaven and hell, 

 and the regions of frost, at which a serpent gnawed, 

 and on the top was perched an eagle, which had 

 carried off the sacred mead : dew was poured over 

 it by the fates to preserve it from decay. Here we 

 have many elements introduced which are explained 

 by the account of the fall in Genesis ; and tradition 

 further possessed the ash with much healing virtue. 

 It was once a custom to pass cripples through a 

 natural rupture in this tree as a means of cure ; also 

 the leaves of an ash in which a living shrew-mouse 

 had been buried, were considered to heal the bite 

 of the shrew, which was thought most poisonous. 

 The almost certain fact of the descent of the Scan- 

 dinavians from the Ashkenaz of Genesis x. may by 



the similarity of the word to the ash account for 

 their derivation from the tree. The Jews still give 

 the name of Ashkenazim to the German part of 

 their community. The toughness of ash wood made 

 it very suitable for the manufacture of weapons, and 

 the Greeks therefore dedicated it to the god of war: 

 its Latin \\2i.m&,fraxiiius, means lance. In Northern 

 Europe there are many superstitions connected with 

 the mountain ash, or rowan : it was considered a 

 charm against storms, and was carried in ships, as 

 the god Thor, they said, had once been saved from 

 drowning by catching hold of it, and they thought 

 he would never launch his thunderbolts against a 

 vessel which contained a piece of this tree. The 

 traditional broomstick of witches was made of 

 rowan, and their enchantments, called runes, were 

 written on little pieces of its bark. The rowan was 

 also said to spring up on the graves of innocent 

 persons put to death. It is a curious fact that an 

 ash is also sacred in India. 



To ourselves the oak is the most interesting of 

 all mystical trees, owing to its extreme sanctity in 

 old times ; but this sanctity, the origin of which is 

 very difficult to discover, was not confined to Britain. 

 In Hebrew its name " El " suggests a sacred con- 

 nection ; idols carved of oak [are mentioned by the 

 prophet Isaiah, and there are many particular oaks 

 spoken of in the Bible. In Grecian mythology we 

 hear of the oaks of Dodona, from whose branches 

 oracles were delivered. There was a strict connec- 

 tion between Jupiter as the thunderer and the oak, 

 which was supposed especially to attract the light- 

 ning ; and this tree is more frequently struck than 

 others, while the zig-za;; character of its boughs 

 reminds us of the course of lightning. The name 

 of the oak in Welsh was " derw," and this com- 

 pounded with "gwydd," a wise man, made up the 

 term Druid. The Druids seem to have identified the 

 oak itself with the object of their veneration, and 

 performed their rites, which were accompanied with 

 human sacrifices, among a grove of thick oaks on 

 which the mistletoe was to be found. They con- 

 sidered everything growing on the oak sacred, and 

 said that seed of the mistletoe was deposited on it 

 by a heavenly messenger : it is in fact carried by a 

 bird. The mistletoe was called "the tree of pure 

 gold," and it was gathered by the arch-druid with 

 a golden sickle; they invested it with life-giving 

 powers, which they said it derived from the bright 

 sphere above the sky. The name mistletoe comes 

 from two words, mistl, different, and tan, a twig, 

 being a twig different from the tree on which it 

 grows : it was a celebrated plant throughout 

 Northern mythology, and also in India. Parasitic 

 plants were generally regarded with awe, and to 

 this day in Wales the peasants are afraid to gather 

 the dodder on a journey, lest, if they do so, they 

 should be killed by the fairies before they reach 

 their destination. There is a fungus which pro- 



