^ Introduction fj£ 



my garden that the spices thereof may flow out ' (Cant. iv. 

 1 6). The royal herb garden was a typical Eastern herb 

 garden, that is a garden consisting chiefly of sweet-scented 

 shrubs — * camphire with spikenard, spikenard and saffron ; 

 calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh 

 and aloes with all the chief spices.' The ' mountains of 

 spices ' mentioned in Canticles vin. 14, probably refer 

 to the King's gardens of spices on the hill-sides round 

 Jerusalem. In the days of his descendant Hezekiah 

 1 spices ' were reckoned among the royal treasures, and 

 as such stored in a special house. ' And Hezekiah had 

 exceeding much riches and honour, and he made himself 

 treasuries for silver and for gold . . . and for spices, and 

 for shields and for all manner of pleasant jewels ' (2 Chron. 

 xxii. 27, and see also 2 Kings xx. 13). Perfumes in 

 Solomon's day appear to have been made from vegetable 

 substances only, for no mention is made of ambergris, 

 nor musk, nor indeed of any scent of animal extraction, 

 with the sole exception of ' onycha ' (the operculum of a 

 variety of mussel found in the Red Sea). The art of dis- 

 tilling was apparently unknown in Biblical times, but Job 

 refers to the method of making perfumes by boiling 

 vegetable substances in fat. Isaiah mentions the * sweet 

 balls ' (marginal reading) attached to long chains sus- 

 pended either from the neck or at their girdles which 

 the Hebrew women wore (Isa. m. 19). These probably 

 resembled the pomanders of Elizabethan days. 



Mediaeval gardens, like those of the East, were scented 

 gardens, and it is pleasant to think of the great gardeners 

 of those early days. Of Saint Radegonde, Queen of 

 Clothair, who fled to Poitiers, and, with her nuns, tended 

 the violets and roses in the garden they made on the sunny 



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