CHAPTER X 



FLOWERS 



The interest in botany of many of us undoubtedly 

 springs from a love of flowers. 



There is nothing modern about this appreciation, 

 for we find that men and women in the very oldest 

 civilisations, from which we have any satisfactory 

 evidence, not only delighted in flowers, but had the 

 oddest and strangest symbolisms drawn directly from 

 buds and blossoms. 



One has but to remember the story of " lovely 

 Thais," the friend of Alexander the Great, of Maenander 

 the poet, and who became the spouse of Ptolemy, King 

 of Egypt. 



When the mummy of this famous beauty was dis- 

 covered, it held in its withered hand a plant of the 

 rose-of-Jericho, of course a symbol of the resurrection. 1 

 When this well-known desert plant is placed in water 

 it uncurls and revives, becoming fresh, green, and 

 vigorous. 



Lovely Thais hoped that she also would enjoy 

 immortality. 



One French author at once and unhesitatingly 

 declared that she must have been a Christian. One 

 would scarcely have supposed so from what little has 

 been recorded of her life, but as a fact she died many 

 years before Christ was born. 



But in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon poets compared 



108 



