CHAPTER IV. 



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HE application of flowers and plants to ceremonial 

 purposes is of the highest antiquity. From the 

 earliest periods, man, after he had discovered 



"What drops the Myrrh and what the balmy Reed," 



2 offered up on primitive altars, as incense to the 

 fi Deity, the choicest and most fragrant woods, the 

 aromatic gums from trees, and the subtle essences 

 he obtained from flowers. In the odorous but intoxicating fumes 

 which slowly ascended, in wreaths heavy with fragrance, from the 

 altar, the pious ancients saw the mystic agency by which their prayers 

 would be wafted from earth to the abodes of the gods ; and so, says 

 Mr. Rimmel, "the altars of Zoroaster and of Confucius, the temples 

 of Memphis, and those of Jerusalem, all smoked alike with incense 

 and sweet-scented woods." Nor was the admiration and use of 

 vegetable productions confined to the inhabitants of the old world 

 alone, for the Mexicans, according to the Abbe Clavigero, have, from 

 time immemorial, studied the cultivation of flowers and odoriferous 

 plants, which they employed in the worship of their gods. 



But the use of flowers and odorous shrubs was not long con- 

 fined by the ancients to their sacred rites ; they soon began to consider 

 them as essential to their domestic life. Thus, the Egyptians, 

 though they offered the finest fruit and the finest flowers to the gods, 

 and employed perfumes at all their sacred festivals, as well as at 

 their daily oblations, were lavish in the use of flowers at their 

 private entertainments, and in all circumstances of their every-day 

 life. At a reception given by an Egyptian noble, it was customary, 

 after the ceremony of anointing, for each guest to be presented 

 with a Lotus-flower when entering the saloon, and this flower the 

 guest continued to hold in his hand. Servants brought necklaces 

 of flowers composed chiefly of the Lotus ; a garland was put round 

 the head, and a single Lotus-bud, or a full-blown flower was so 



