34 FLORA HISTORICA. 



tice amongst our ancestors; and that it is only 

 within the last half of the eighteenth century, that 

 Pinks were much improved and varied, so as to be 

 greatly valued amongst florists. We have already 

 shown that they were cultivated in the reign of 

 Ehzabeth; and Parkinson enumerates many fine 

 varieties that were favourites in the time of his 

 unhappy master Charles the First. 



The White Pink is one of the flowers which 

 Milton calls for in his monody on Lycidas ; and 

 Loudon and Wise, so celebrated for having laid 

 out the gardens of Blenheim, and improving those 

 of Kensington, give more pages on the cultivation 

 of the Pink than on that of any other Plant con- 

 tained in their " Retired Gardener" of 1706. 



Madame de Genhs tells us that it was the good 

 King Rene of Anjou, the Henry the Fourth of 

 Provence, who first enriched the gardens of France 

 with the Pink ; and to this day it remains a fa- 

 vourite flower in the neighbourhood of Toulouse, 

 although it is much less frequent in the vicinity of 

 Paris than formerly. 



It is a flower that has attracted the particular 

 notice of Princes. The Great Conde, whilst a 

 prisoner in the Bastile, amused himself in the 

 cultivation of Pinks, which induced Madame de 

 Scuderi to make the following verses on the sub- 

 ject— 



