372 FLORA DOMESTICA. 



northern confines of Arabia. Conrad Gesner first made 

 the eastern Tulip known by a description and figure. Bal- 

 binus asserts that Busbequius brought the first Tulip-roots 

 to Prague, whence they were spread all over Germany. 

 Busbequius himself says, in a letter written in 1754, that 

 this fiower was then new to him. We know that he col- 

 lected natural curiosities, and brought many from the Le- 

 vant. He relates that he paid very dear to the Turks for 

 Tulips ; but he nowhere affirms that he was the first who 

 brought them from the East. In 1565, there were Tulips 

 in the garden of Mr. Fugger, from whom Gesner wished 

 to procure some. The first Tulips planted in England 

 were sent from Vienna about the end of the sixteenth 

 century*. 



These flowers, of no further utility than to ornament 

 gardens, and whose duration is short and very precarious, 

 became, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the ob- 

 ject of a trade for which there is no parallel, and their 

 price rose beyond the value of the most precious metals. 

 Many authors have given an account of this trade, some 

 of whom have misrepresented it. Menage called it the 

 Tulipomania, at which people laugh because they believe 

 that the beauty and rarity of the flowers induced florists 

 to give such extravagant prices. But this Tulip-trade 

 was a mere gambling commerce, and the Tulips them- 

 selves were only nominally its objects : many bargains 

 being daily made, and the roots neither given nor received. 

 A long and curious account of this trade is to be found in 

 the first volume of Beckmann's History of Inventions. 



Persons fond of flowers, however, particularly in Hol- 

 land, have paid very high prices for Tulips, as the cata- 

 logues of flowers show. In the year 1769 the dearest 



&*& *- ;^n^V?f 



* See Beckmann's History of Inventions, vol. i. 



