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BOOK XXI. 



AN ACCOUNT OF FLOWERS, AND THOSE USED FOR 

 CHAPLETS MORE PARTICULARLY. 



CHAP. 1. (1.) THE NATURE OF FLOWERS AND GARLANDS. 



Cato has recommended that flowers for making chaplets 

 should also be cultivated in the garden ; varieties remarkable 

 for a delicacy which it is quite impossible to express, inas- 

 much as no individual can find such facilities for describing 

 them as Nature does for bestowing on them their numerous tints 

 Nature, who here in especial shows herself in a sportive 

 mood, and takes a delight in the prolific display of her varied 

 productions. The other l plants she has produced for our use 

 and our nutriment, and to them accordingly she has granted 

 years and even ages of duration : but as for the flowers and , 

 their perfumes, she has given them birth for but a day a 

 mighty lesson to man, we see, to teach him that that which in 

 its career is the most beauteous and the most attractive to the 

 eye, is the very first to fade and die. 



Even the limner's art itself possesses no resources for re- 

 producing the colours of the flowers in all their varied tints 

 and combinations, whether we view them in groups alter- 

 nately blending their hues, or whether arranged in festoons, each 

 variety by 2 itself, now assuming a circular form, now running 

 obliquely, and now disposed in a spiral pattern ; or whether, 

 as we see sometimes, one wreath is interwoven within another. 



CHAP. 2. (2.) GARLANDS AND CHAPLETS. 



The ancients used chaplets of diminutive size, called 

 " struppi ;" 3 from which comes our name for a chaplet, " stro- 



1 See B. xxii. c. 1. 



2 " Sive privatis generum funiculis in orbem, in obliqimm, in ambitum ; 

 quaedam coronae per coronas currunt." As we know but little of the forms 

 of the garlands and chaplets of the ancients, the exact translation of this 

 passage is very doubtful. 



3 According to Boettiger, tbe word " struppus " means a string arranged 

 as a fillet or diadem. 



