218 WILD FLOWERS. 



Latin and Greek authors, mention this application 

 of the flower, and Anacreon declares that the rose 

 has power to protect the dead. 



It has been a question whether the rose of Ana- 

 creon was the same as our own, and some have 

 thought that the Island of .Rhodes received its 

 name, not from the rose but from the balaustium, or 

 flower of the pomegranate. But the flower figured 

 on the coins of Rhodes is evidently the former, with 

 its glandular and hirsute calyx; and on some Greek 

 vases of a still earlier time, with black figures on a 

 light ground, women are represented smelling a red 

 flower, with a similar three-cleft calyx, over which 

 is written the name poov. This is also a rose, not 

 a pomegranate flower, and the rose of Anacreon was 

 evidently the same. I will not pause to inquire 

 whether, in his statement respecting its protection 

 of the dead, he refers, as some suppose, to any anti- 

 evil spirit properties, or merely to its use in em- 

 balming ; though the way in which Moore has ren- 

 dered the lines, added to the knowledge which we 

 possess of its being one of the substances employed 

 in the art, renders the latter supposition the more 

 probable; the passage, in Moore's version, stands 

 thus : 



" Preserves the cold imirned clay, 

 And mocks the vestige of decay." 



The custom of planting roses on graves was in 

 the days of Cam den, and according to him, from 

 " time out of mind " observed at Ockley, in 

 Surrey ; more especially in cases where the deceased 

 was a young man or woman whose lover had pre- 



