THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 341 



In all ages men have prized the beauty and perfume of 

 flowers, and they have become an indispensable ornament 

 of even the least important festival. The ancients had 

 their " coronary plants ; " these were consecrated to Venus, 

 and at feasts each guest wore a chaplet. But we must 

 also do them the justice to remark that they employed 

 an ample series of "funereal plants " for the mournful cer- 

 emonies of death ; each one had its mission or special 

 signification. 1 



traversing, at night, the branches of the Orinoco delta, sees with surprise the 

 crowns of these palms lighted up by large fires. These are the habitations of the 

 Guaranis suspended from the trunks of the trees. These people stretch mats in 

 the air, fill them with earth, and on this bed of wet clay light what fires they re- 

 quire for household purposes. For ages they have owed their liberty and polit- 

 ical independence to the treacherous and miry nature of their soil, which they 

 traverse in seasons of drought, and over which they alone know how to pass in 

 safety, to their isolation in the delta of the Orinoco, and to their living in the 

 trees." Von Humboldt, Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales, t. viii., p. 363. 



1 The history of the funereal plants of the ancients has been worked out in a 

 very interesting way by G. A. Langguth, in his Antiquitates Plantarum Feralium 

 apud Grcecos et Romanes, Lipsiae, 1738. He follows up the employment of them 

 from the commencement of the malady to the close of the funeral ceremonies. 

 The author presents us with a true and interesting picture of Greek and Roman 

 manners. When the malady began to alarm a family seriously, they suspended 

 at the patient's door boughs of the favorite tree of Apollo, the inventor of medi- 

 cine, in order to secure a favorable turn to the complaint. To the branches of 

 laurel were added tufts of the Rhamnus, consecrated to Janus, and which was 

 supposed to preserve the dwelling from all harm. But if, despite this invocation 

 for aid, death overtook the sick person, they substituted for these plants black 

 boughs of cypress, the emblem of Pluto and Proserpine; or branches of larch, 

 the funeral tree, as Pliny calls it. At a later period, when the body of the de- 

 funct had been washed, it was anointed with perfumes, myrrh, frankincense, 

 canella, and cardamom. It was then deposited in a coffin of cypress wood, 

 which the Athenians, as Thucydides tells us, considered to be incorruptible, and 

 on the head was placed a wreath, the composition of which was emblematic of the 

 condition of the deceased. It was formed of olive, laurel, white poplar, of lilies 



