THE CHANGE AND ITS ALLIES. 177 



ton, prepare an essence famous among old women for re- 

 storing a fresh black colour to grey hairs. 



Oil of neroli and napha-water, two delicious perfumes, 

 are distilled from orange-flowers ; but the blossoms find 

 their noblest use in being dedicated to the fair brow of 

 the English bride the chosen wreath which the maiden 

 wears but once during that holy rite in which she bids 

 adieu to her maidenhood for ever. 



" Each other blossom in its hour , 



The maid at will may wear; 

 Once, only once, the orange-flower 

 Her wreathed brow may bear." 



It is rather singular that the origin of a custom so 

 general throughout this country as that of appropriating 

 the orange-blossom to the bride should be involved in so 

 much obscurity, but nothing positive seems to be known 

 upon the subject. Some years ago a correspondent of 

 Notes and Queries made a request in that work for some 

 information upon the point, but all that was elicited, after 

 a lapse of more than a year, was that a gentleman had 

 read " somewhere" that the custom was derived from the 

 Saracens, and it was believed to have been adopted on 

 account of the fertility of the orange-plant. It may be 

 allowed, therefore, to offer the conjecture, since to conjec- 

 ture we are left, that it might originally have implied a 

 desire that, as the flowers and fruit appear together upon 

 this tree, so the bride might retain the graces of maiden- 

 hood amid the cares of married life. 



But though the flowers of the ordinary orange are es- 

 teemed for their fragrance even more than for their beauty, 

 the former quality is most powerfully developed in a dis- 

 tinct variety of the family distinguished as the Bergamot. 

 The fruit of the common Bergamottier, as the tree is 

 called, is occasionally round, but more often pyriform,* 

 and only attains a pale yellow in Paris orangeries, but 

 beams with a bright golden hue in the gardens of Italy, 

 where it is chiefly grown in the neighbourhood of Ber- 

 gamo, whence the name both of the tree and of the scent 



See Plate V., fig. 12. 



12 



