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CHAPTER XV. 



Sfaat ^Ljm'BoPirrrj al^t) feanguage. 



HE antiquity of floral emblems probably dates 

 from the time when the human heart first beat 

 with the gentle emotions of affecftion or throbbed 

 with the wild pulsations of love. Then it was 

 that man sought to express through the instru- 

 mentality of flowers his love of purity and 

 beauty, or to typify through their aid the ardour 

 of his passionate desires; for the symbolism of 

 flowers, it has been conjectured, was first conceived as a parable 

 speaking to the eye and thence teaching the heart. 



Driven, in his struggle for existence, to learn the properties 

 of plants in order to obtain wholesome food, man found that 

 with the beauty of their form and colour they spoke lovingly 

 to him. They could be touched, tasted, handled, planted, sown, 

 and reaped : they were useful, easily converted into simple articles 

 of clothing, or bent, twisted, and cut into weapons and tools. 

 Flowers became a language to man very early, and according 

 to their poisonous, soothing, or nutritious qualities, or on account 

 of some peculiarities in their growth or shape which seemed to 

 tell upon the mysteries of life, birth, and death, he gave them 

 names which thenceforth became words and symbols to him of 

 these phenomena. 



Glimpses of the ancient poetical plant symbolism have been 

 found amid the ruins of temples, graven on the sides of rocks, and 

 inscribed on the walls of mighty caves where the early nations of 

 India, Assyria, Chaldaea, and Egypt knelt in adoration. The 

 Chinese from time immemorial have known a comprehensive 

 system of floral signs and emblems, and the Japanese have ever 

 possessed a mode of communicating by symbolic flowers. Persian 

 literature abounds in chaste and poetical allegories, which demon- 

 strate the antiquity of floral symbolism in that far Eastern land : 

 thus we are told that Sadi the poet, when a slave, presented to his 

 tyrant master a Rose accompanied with this pathetic appeal : — 

 " Do good to thy servant whilst thou hast the power, for the season 

 of power is often as transient as the duration of this beautiful 



