Chap, 11.] THE LILT. 315 



Blended, too, with roses, the lily'^ produces a remarkably fine 

 effect ; for it begins to make its appearance, in fact, just as the 

 rose is in the very middle of its season. There is no flower 

 that grows to a greater height than the lily, sometimes, in- 

 deed, as much as three cubits ; the head of it being always 

 drooping, as though the neck of the flower were unable to 

 support its weight. The whiteness of the lily is quite remark- 

 able, the petals being striated on the exterior ; the flower is 

 narrow at the base, and gradually expanding in shape like a 

 tapering'^ cup with the edges curving outwards, the fine pistils 

 of the flower, and the stamens with their antherae of a saffron 

 colour, standing erect in the middle.^*' Hence the perfume of 

 the lily, as well as its colour, is two-fold, there being one for 

 the petals and another for the stamens. The difference, how- 

 ever, between them is but very small, and when the flower is 

 employed for making lily unguents and oils, the petals are 

 never rejected. 



There is a flower, not unlike the lily, produced by the plant 

 known to us as the '' convolvulus."^^ It grows among shrubs, 

 is totally destitute of smell, and has not the yellow antherae of 

 the lily within : only vying with it in its whiteness, it would 

 almost appear to be the rough sketch ^^ made by Kature when 

 she was learning how to make the lily. The white lily is 

 propagated in all the various ways which are employed for the 

 cultivation of the rose,®^ as also by means of a certain tearlike 



7s The Lihum candidum of Linnaeus. Fee remarks that the " Lilium" 

 of the Romans and the Xdpiov of the Greeks is evidently derived from 

 the laleh of the Persians. 



'9 " Calathi." The "calathus" was a work-basket of tapering shape ; 

 it was also used for carrying fruits and flowers, Ovid, Art. Am. ii. 264. 

 Cups, too, for wine were called by this name, Virg. Eel. v. 71. 



*»•' As this passage has been somewhat ampMed in the translation, it 

 will perhaps be as well to insert it : '• Resupinis per ambitum labris, te- 

 nuique pilo et staminum stantibus in medio crocis." 



^1 The Convolvulus sajpium of modern botany ; the only resemblance 

 in which to the lily is in the colour, it being totally different in every other 

 respect. 



^- " Rudimentum." She must have set to work in a very roundabout 

 way, Fee thinks, and one in which it would be quite impossible for a na- 

 turalist to follow her. 



^ The white lily is reproduced from the offsets of the bulbs ; and, as 

 Fee justly remarks, it is highly absurd to compare the mode of culti- 

 vation with that of the rose, which is propagated from slips. 



