230 WILD FLOWERS. 



almost every time he speaks of any assembled 

 group of Persians, some reference to the roses scat- 

 tered around them, or wreathed on their kalions is 

 sure to occur. No wonder then, that in this land 

 the Feast of Roses should be a season of rejoicing, 

 lasting, according to Pietro de la Valle, through the 

 whole period of their flowering ; when 



* * " A wilderness of flowers, 

 Seems as tho' from all the bowers, 

 And fairest fields, of all the year 

 The mingled spoil is scattered here. 

 The lake too like a garden breathes 



With the rich buds that o'er it lie ; 

 As if a fairy shower of wreaths 



Had fallen upon it from the sky;" 

 and when, 



" Those infant groups at play 

 Among the tents that line the way, 

 Fling, unawed by slave or mother, 

 Handsful of roses at each other." 



The late Sir Gore Ouseley relates a curious cir- 

 cumstance with regard to one peculiar species of 

 rose (which, however, he does not indicate) as elu- 

 cidating an old Persian distich, " Give me wine, 

 but not that wine which causes indigestion ; give 

 me roses, but not those roses which produce a cold 

 in the head/' This he actually found by experience 

 to be the case with certain roses, which produced 

 in him all the symptoms of a cold (and that before 

 he became acquainted with the poem); and the 

 same was corroborated by the evidence of several 

 Persians to whom he mentioned it.* It would 



* " Notice of Persian Poets," by Sir G. Ouseley, with a 

 Memoir by the Eev. J. Keynolds. 



