VERBENA. 



^' Boule ih Feu^'' (G. Pmith.), F.C.C. — A bright orange scarlet, with distinct light eye; 

 form pood, and a first rate truss. 



''Lmli/ Liicon'' (Turner.), F.C.C. — Pule rose color; truss full (twelve pips), of circular 

 form and good suhstanoe; the habit and foliage good. 



''Woruh-r/nr' (Turner.), C— Bright rich piirjile, with light eye; good habit and foliage; 

 a full truss of Inun fifteen to twenty pips; large llowcrs, of not first rate f(n-m ; the sub- 

 stiince good. 



RURAL CEMETERIES. 



BY A. D. G., CLINTON, N. T. 



It is, doubtless, a dictate of our common liumanity, to cherish reverence and affection 

 for tte ashes of the dead. Even the savage, driven into the wilderness by the marcli 

 of civilization, parts from the graves of his fathers as reluctantly as fi'om his corn-fields 

 and hunting-grounds. Some men, it is true, afl'ect indifference concerning the j)lace 

 and manner of their sepulture. Like certain of the ant;ients, who gave orders that their 

 bodies should be burned, and the ashes thrown to the winds, — or others, who would 

 have their remains exposed to the birds and beasts of prey, — they deem it a weakness 

 to feel any concern about the disposal of their bodies after death. Yet even such per- 

 sons, with all their professed indifierence concerning themselves, do not fail to show a 

 tender respect for the dust of their deceased friends. Like other men, they wish to 

 have their remains suitably composed for the grave, and the spot of their interment 

 marked by some commemorative memorial. 



But where shall our bodies rest? Not in the crowded city or town, amid the haunts 

 of trafhc and pleasure and vice, where Gain will ere long disturb their repose and sub- 

 ject them to indignities ; but in the country, under the open sky, and amid all the 

 o-enial influences of nature. This has been the almost universal desire of mankind. 

 In the earliest records of our race, we read that Abraham bought a field and the cave 

 which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, for a permanent burial-place 

 for himself and his descendants. The ancient Egyptians and Persians buried their 

 dead in the country. The former had a public cemetery on the shores of the lak(! 

 Acherusia. It was a large plain, surrounded by trees, and intersected by canals. The 

 bodies of the dead were first embalmed, and then buried in the sand or in tombs cut 

 out of the rocks. The custom of burning the remains of the dead, originated with the 

 Greeks, from whom it was copied by the Romans. After the ceremony of cremation, 

 the ashes were gathered into an urn, and the whole was carried in procession anil 

 inten-ed by the side of the public roads without the city. Many of the gardens around 

 Jerusalem were used as family burial-places. The early Christians interred their dead 

 in caverns, probably to conceal them from the malice of their persecutors. The ancient 

 Germans were wont to bury in groves consecrated by their priests. The Turks bury 

 their dead amid groves of Cypress, which they style, very poetically, "cities of silence." 



The rural cemetery, however, as we now see it, is of comparatively modern origin, and 

 offspring, in no small degree, of modern refinement and a Christian civilization. 



The connection of such burial-places with the public health, is a consideration not 



