1881.] TRANSACTIONS. 43 



Although this description is supposed to be wholly fabulous — 

 a figment of the brain — it has no less value as an indication of the 

 state of horticultural art in Greece when Homer sang his immor- 

 tal Epic. In fact its value is rather enhanced by its fictitious 

 character, for the poet may be supposed in such case to give loose 

 rein to his imagination, and to depict in glowing terms the highest 

 conception possible to a Grecian of what a garden might, could, or 

 should be. And it is to be noted that in this description no flowers 

 are mentioned. The garden is made to tickle the palate rather 

 than to gratify the eye — it is a picture of sensuous rather than 

 spiritual beauty. And no exact and definite description of a 

 fiower garden (so far as I am aware) can be found in their litera- 

 ture which can be cited as a type of their national taste. Plutarch 

 says the Greeks planted roses and violets among the onions and 

 the leeks. It is probable that in their floriculture they combined 

 beauty with utility for the most part. Yet flowers were in con- 

 stant demand in all their civil and religious ceremonies. Crowns 

 and wreaths were worn by priests in their sacrificial rites. Actors, 

 clowns and spectators at their games and theatres wore flowers in 

 profusion — garlands were placed at the doors of temples and 

 upon the altars of the gods, Pollox mentions the following as 

 the principal flowers used by the Greeks in their crowns and gar- 

 lands : — roses, violets, lilies, the water-mint, anemones (or the 

 wind flowers), wild thyme, crocuses, hyacinths, the gold-colored 

 aurelia, the hemerocallis (or flowers that bloom but for a day), the 

 elenia, the thernalia (a plant the leaves of which are lit for the 

 wicks of lamps), the asphodel, the white daffodil, the sweet lotus, 

 the camomile, the parthenis, and such other flowers as are de- 

 lightful to the eye and possess a sweet fragrance. So although 

 the taste of the Greeks for landscape gardening was not develop- 

 ed in the direction of extensive ornamental grounds, yet much 

 artistic effect was produced in the arrangement of fountains, 

 shade-trees, evergreens and flowering shrubs. Among their ever- 

 greens the myrtle was a favorite. Sometimes it l)loomed as a 

 small shrub, in other places it rose to the height of a tree, while 

 elsewhere it was planted in dense clusters or thickets and arched 

 in bowers. Among their trees and shrubs were the tamarisk, the 

 strawberrj' tree, the box, the bay, the juniper, the styrax, the 

 white flowered laurel, the pine-tree, the smilax, the cedar, the 

 carob, the maple, the ash, the elm, the plantane, and the evergreen 

 oak. With the exception of the elder and the younger Pliny 

 there is almost the same meagreness of allusion to horticultural 

 pursuits in Roman as in Grecian literature. Even Virgil, their 

 greatest poet, although he devotes the Georgics — next to the 

 -^neid, his most famous poem, to agriculture, and topics intimate- 



