4i 8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tion of the gardens of Alkinous, the author of the ' Odyssey ' tells 

 us there " grow tall trees blooming, pear-trees, and pomegranates, and 

 apple-trees with bright fruit, and sweet figs, and olives and their 

 blossoms. Some of the fruit is always ripening, yet there is a constant 

 bloom on the trees and much unripe fruit. There too, skirting the 

 farthest line, are all manner of garden-beds, that are perpetually fresh." 

 We have here a sort of combination of orchard and vegetable garden, 

 for plainly the writer had in mind utility rather than beauty. At 

 any rate there is nothing in this quotation, in which the author had 

 literally sent his imagination on its loftiest flights, to indicate that he 

 knew cultivated flowers. The same may be said of ' Calypso's Isle.' 

 The Greeks considered crowns of flowers or leaves of some kind indis- 

 pensable at every banquet and revel. Anacreon, the prince of volup- 

 tuaries, frequently refers to this well-known custom. The material 

 of which the wreath was made does not seem to have been regarded as 

 of primary importance. The symbol only, not the substance, was 

 essential. According to Xenophon, when some of the ten thousand in 

 Armenia in the depth of winter were invited to a feast by one of the 

 native chiefs, the revelers crowned themselves with hay. The will did 

 duty for the deed. This story reminds one of the Arabs, who are 

 punctilious in performing the stated ablutions enjoined by the Koran. 

 But as water is sometimes too precious to be wasted in this way, they 

 use sand, which, mixed with a liberal amount of credulity, is to the 

 faithful equally efficacious. The extracts from Homer recall the so- 

 called hanging gardens of Babylon constructed for Semiramis more 

 than two thousand years before Christ. These constituted a park built 

 on an artificial elevation, so that the epithet usually applied to them 

 would be equally suitable to the grounds at Versailles or the Buttes 

 Chaumont in Paris — all hung on the ground. The Persian monarchs 

 and noblemen maintained extensive pleasure-grounds, in which great 

 quantities of game were enclosed. It is from their designation of these 

 parks that we get our word Paradise. It comes to us from the Greek, 

 and is found in nearly all the modern European languages. The 

 general opinion, however, is that the first parks, in the modern sense 

 of the term, were the work of the Roman emperors. 



Homer has no word for ' color ' nor for any of the primary colors. 

 In like manner the term usually translated ' black ' is very indefinite. 

 It is used of the bronzed complexion of Ulysses and of his henchman, 

 Eurybates; of the ripe grape; of beans; of wine, and of the storm 

 cloud. We moderns would say that it is strictly applicable in the last 

 case only; certainly the difference between the hue of the storm cloud 

 and the darkest complexion of a white man is very marked. Of 

 Agamemnon it is said that he ' stood weeping like unto a fountain of 

 dark water that from a beetling cliff poureth down its black stream.' 

 In the ' Odyssey ' it is said of Ulysses that ' Athena shed great beauty 



