LILIES FOR THE HOME GARDEN. 



BY E. S. MILLER, WADING RIVER, N. Y. 



Delivered before the Society, with stereopticon illustrations, March 12, 



1910. 



The lily has been given us in song and story for three thousand 

 years. Solomon sang of its grace and loveliness. Other writers 

 in the Old and New Testaments have mentioned its beauty. Poets 

 have sung of its worth and loveliness down to the present time. We 

 have this mythological account of its origin: "Jupiter wished to 

 make his boy Hercules (born of a mortal) one of the gods; so he 

 snatched him from the bosom of his earthly mother, Alcmena, and 

 bore him to the breast of the godlike Juno. The milk is spilled 

 from the full-mouthed boy as he traverses the sky (making the 

 Milky Way), and what drops below stars and clouds and touches 

 earth, stains the ground with lilies." 



The identity of the different species is w T rapt in obscurity. While 

 Lilium chalcedonicum, the Scarlet Martagon, covers the plains 

 of Syria and Lilium candidum, the Annunciation lily, grows abun- 

 dantly in these regions, it is generally conceded that the lily of the 

 field, mentioned centuries later, was the anemone. Notwithstand- 

 ing the early obscurity of the species referred to in the Bible we 

 find that chalcedonicum and candidum were introduced into 

 England prior to 1590, over three hundred years ago. Gerarde in 

 his herbal, published in 1596, speaks of candidum as an old and 

 well-known flower, and mentions Martagon lilies as being under 

 cultivation as early as 1562. Pijreniacum was brought from the 

 Pyrenees to England before this date. In this time much has been 

 written of them, and about 150 species and varieties have been 

 introduced to cultivation. 



Parkinson in his "Paradisus or Garden of Pleasant Flowers," 

 published in 1689, gives the lily the most prominent place, "because 

 (as he says) the Lily is the more stately flower among manie." He 



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