TJie Tulip. 123 



late as the middle of the sixteenth century, as in the year 1554 

 seeds and bulbs of the Tulip were sent to Vienna with an ob- 

 servation that they cost an enormous price. Gesner tells us 

 considerable about the Tulip, and that he saw it at Augsburg ; 

 and from him a species very common and well known in the 

 United States has been named the T. Gesneriana. Clusius 

 tells us, that a friend who had received a quantity of Tulip bulbs 

 committed them to his care, but thinking they were worthless he 

 threw them in a heap together on the ground, where to his as- 

 tonishment they produced a great variety of flowers. He also 

 gave more than a hundred of them to an apothecary at Vienna, 

 to be preserved in sugar, in the same manner as the roots of the 

 orchis, in order to ascertain if they possessed not the same qualities. 

 A merchant of Amsterdam had a cargo of Tulip roots as early as 

 1562, and taking them for a sort of onion, ordered some to be 

 roasted under embers and ate them with oil and vinegar, as such ; 

 the rest he set in the kitchen garden among the cabbages, where 

 most of them perished, except a few that George Pye, a merchant 

 of Mechlin, took under his care, which produced a variety of 

 beautiful flowers. It is also related that a sailor having taken 

 some goods to a Dutch merchant, had a herring given him for 

 his breakfast, but seeing what he supposed to be a kind of small 

 onions lying on the counter, the tar carelessly took up a handful, 

 which he ate with his fish. These proved to have been tulips of 

 such value that it was estimated a magnificent breakfast might 

 have been given to the heads of the Dutch government for less 

 expense than the cost of the condiment which the sailor so inad- 

 vertently took with his herring. It was introduced into Eng- 

 land in 157S, when its sceptre was under the sway of a female 

 monarch, who encouraged such importations. It was towards 

 the middle of the seventeenth century that the rage for flowers, 

 and particularly for Tulips, was carried to such excess both in 

 Holland and France as to produce bankruptcy and ruin to many 

 families ; it would be almost impossible for us to credit the ex- 

 traordinary accounts handed down respecting these gambling 

 speculations. Betting to a ruinous amount was often made res- 

 pecting the eventual superiority of promising seedling bulbs ; 

 and for the possession of breeders of high merit, from which 

 fine seedlings might be expected, as large a sum was given as 

 the fleetest race-horse of the turf ever sold for. About the year 



