ARALIACE^. 1S3 



chaplets and garlands. Mr. London tells us, however, that the most probable 

 explanation is, that the vine is found at Nyssa, the reputed birthplace of Bacchus, and 

 in no other part of India. It is related that when Alexander's army, after their 

 conquest of Babylon, arrived at this mountain, and found it covered with laurel and 

 Ivy, they were so transported with joy that they tore up the Ivy by the roots, and 

 twining it round their heads, burst forth into hymns to Bacchus and prayers for their 

 native country. Not only Bacchus, who Tliny tells us was the first who wore a crown, 

 but Sileuus also was crowned with Ivy, and the golden-berried kind, before the trans- 

 formation of Daphne into a laurel, was worn by Apollo, and after him by the poets. 

 Pope does not seem to allow this, for he gives the plant expressly to critics : — 



" Immortal Vida, on whose honoured brow 

 The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow." 



The priests of the Greeks presented a wreath of Ivy to a newly married pair, as e 

 symbol of the closeness of the tie that ought to bind them together. 



Numerous allusions to this plant occur in Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and many 

 other poets both ancient and modern. Spenser, in his " Virgil's Gnat," enumerates it 

 amongst the ornaments of the woods : — 



" Emongst the rest the clambering Yvie grew, 

 Knitting his wanton armes with grasping hold, 

 Least that the Poplar happily should rew 

 Her brother's strokes, whose boughs she doth enfold 

 With her little twigs till they the top survew, 

 And paint with pallid green her buds of gold." 



Sir Walter Scott calls it " the envious Ivy," while other authors have considered 

 it as sacred to friendship, of the true nature of which it would seem to be symbolical. 

 " Nothing," says St. Pierre, in his " Studies of Nature," " can separate it from the tree 

 which it has once embraced ; it clothes it with its own leaves in that inclement season 

 when its dark boughs are covered with hoar frost. The faithful companion of its 

 destiny, it falls when the tree is cut down ; death itself does not relax its grasp ; and 

 it continues to adorn with its verdure the dry trunk that once supported it." Our 

 own poet, Bernard Barton, embodies the same idea in some beautiful lines : — 



" Hast thou seen in winter's stormiest day 



The trunk of a blighted oak, 

 Not dead, but sinking in slow decay 



Beneath time's resistless stroke, 

 Bound which a luxuriant Ivy had grown, 

 And wreathed it with verdure not its own 1 



" I can draw from this perish 'd tree 

 Thoughts which are soothing and dear to me, 

 That which is closest and longest clings, 

 Is alone worth a serious thought ! 

 Should aught be unlovely which thus can shed 

 Grace on the dying and leaves on the dead 1" 



Many have considered the Ivy as a parasite injuring and even destroying its 

 benefactor, from whom it derives support and nourishment. Shakespeare seems to have 

 been of this opinion, for botanical inquiries had made but little progress in his time, or 



