558 pPant "bore, Ise^er^/, drxBi Isyricy, 



formed when, heart-broken at the desertion of her lover Phoebus, 

 she remained rooted to the ground, and became, according to 

 Ovid, metamorphosed into a flower resembHng a Violet. " Held 

 firmly by the root, she still turns to the Sun she loves, and, changed 

 herself, she keeps her love unchanged." Now the Helianthus, or 

 modern Sunflower, could not have been the blossom mentioned by 

 Ovid, inasmuch as it is not a European plant, was not known in 

 his day, and first came to us from North America. In its native 

 country of Peru, the Helianthus is said to have been much 

 reverenced on account of the resemblance borne by its radiant 

 blossoms to the Sun, which luminary was worshipped by the 

 Peruvians. In their Temple of the Sun, the officiating priestesses 

 were crowned with Sunflowers of pure gold, and they wore them 

 in their bosoms, and carried them in their hands. The early 

 Spanish invaders of Peru found in these temples of the Sun 

 numerous representations of the Sunflower in virgin gold, the 

 workmanship of which was so exquisite, that it far out-valued the 

 precious metal of which they were formed. Gerarde, writing in 

 1597, remarks: — "The floure of the Sun is called in Latine Flos 

 Solis; for that some have reported it to turn with the Sunne, which 

 I could never observe, although I have endeavoured to finde out 

 the truth of it : but I rather thinke it was so called because it 

 resembles the radiant beams of the Sunne, whereupon some have 

 called Corona Solis and Sol Indianus, the Indian Sunne-floure : others 

 Chrysanthemum Periivianum, or the Golden Flower of Peru : in English, 

 the Floure of the Sun, or the Sun-floure." (See Heliotrope.) 



SYCAMORE. — Sycamore is properly the name of an Egyp- 

 tian tree, the leaves of which resemble those of the Mulberry and 

 the fruit that of the wild Fig; whence it was named from both 



Sukomoros; sukon signifying a Fig, and moros a Mulberry-tree. 



Thevenot gives an interesting tradition relating to one of these 

 trees. He writes : — " At Matharee is a large Sycamore, or Pharaoh's 

 Fig, very old, but which bears fruit every year. They say, that upon 

 the Virgin passing that way with her son Jesus, and being pursued 

 by the people, this Fig-tree opened to receive her, and closed her 

 in, until the people had passed by, when it re-opened ; and that 

 it remained open ever after to the year 1656, when the part 

 of the trunk that had separated itself was broken away." The 

 tree is still shown to travellers a few miles north-east of Cairo. 

 Another version relates that the Holy Family, at the con- 

 clusion of their flight into Egypt, finally rested in the village of 

 Matarea, beyond the city of Hermopolis, and took up their resi- 

 dence in a grove of Sycamores, a circumstance which gave the 

 Sycamore-tree a certain degree of interest in early Christian 

 times. The Crusaders imported it into Europe, and Mary Stuart, 

 probably on account of its sacred associations, brought from France 

 and planted in her garden the first Sycamores which grew in 

 Scotland. From the wood of this Egyptian Fig-tree or Sycamore 



