ROSES 



Valley, Tuberose, " the sweetest flower for scent that grows," 

 Jonquil {Narcissus jonquilla), Heliotrope (imported from 

 Peru in 1757), Spanish Jasmine (/. grandiflorum), which is 

 a native of Nepaul, and was brought to Europe in 1629, and 

 various Roses.^ 



These Roses have had a long, interesting, and honourable 

 history. No one knows when they were first cultivated. 

 Solomon had his rose-gardens at Jericho. Queen Cleopatra 

 spent some £400 on roses in one day, and Nero is said to 

 have beaten this record by wasting 4,000,000 sesterces 

 (£30,000) in roses for a single banquet. 



Rosewater is said to have been first produced by an Arab 

 physician called Rhazes in the tenth century. When Sultan 

 Saladin recovered Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, the 

 pavement and walls of the Mosque of Omar were washed and 

 purified with rosewater. That stout warrior Thibault IV, 

 Count de Brie et de Champagne, brought back roses from 

 Damascus on his return to his native land. That was the 

 origin of the valuable Provence roses. The Lancastrians 

 chose a Provence rose as their badge at the beginning of 

 the Civil Wars of the Roses in England. 



Otto of Roses, or the essential oil, was discovered by Prin- 

 cess Nour Jehan at the court of the Great Mogul, and she 

 received as her reward a pearl necklace worth 30,000 rupees. 

 The price of otto of roses seems to have been about £320 

 per pound in Persia and India when the traveller Tavernier 

 visited those countries in 1616. 



In the fifteenth and sixteenth centm-ies, peers of France 

 had to present bouquets and crowns of roses to the assembled 

 Parliament. 



1 Heuze, Les Plantes Indtistrielles. Most of the following details are 

 obtained from this valuable work. 



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