THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 



FROM the curliest times, plants, or flowers, have had a 

 mystic or symbolical signification. Thus the Olive among 

 all nations is deemed an emblem of peace, because when 

 Noah s dove brought a branch of this tree to the ark, it proved 

 that the waters of the flood had abated, and therefore that 

 there was a reconciliation between an offended heaven and a 

 guilty earth. 



Among many of the ancient nations particular plants were 

 held sacred. Thus the Egyptians dedicated the Lotus, a plant 

 growing on the banks of the Nile, to their god Osiris, whose 

 head was always ornamented with a figure of this shrub. 

 This people also dedicated the Lotus to the sun, as the god 

 of eloquence. 



In like manner among the Greeks, the Myrtle, an evergreen 

 vine, or shrub, was consecrated to Venus, the goddess of love, 

 the Oak to Jupiter, the king of the gods, and the Olive to 

 Minerva, the goddess of wisdom. 



The poets of mythology pretended that persons, by the 

 power of the gods, were not unfrequently metamorphosed in- 

 to plants, thus originating names which have continued to this 

 day, arid forming emblems which no sentimental poet has dis- 

 dained to employ. The name Narcissus, it is well known, 

 comes from that of a beautiful youth, who seeing himself, or 

 rather his image, in a fountain, was so enamoured of his own 

 charms, that he pined to death in consequence. Of course, 

 Narcissus, in this language, is an emblem of self-love. In 

 the same strain of poetic fiction, Daphne was changed by 

 her father Peneus, into the Laurel, to save her from the per- 

 secution of the god Apollo. With the Laurel the Greeks 

 and Romans crowned their victors, and hence it became the 

 emolem of glory arid honor to this day. 



In more recent times, the example of the ancients in the 



