FRAGRANT LEAVES 5 
rural medicine. The growing and culling of herbs and 
simples, and their distillation, or formation into cordials 
and potions, was carried on by wise and practical house- 
wives and shrewd old village dames. Pomanders were 
made and given as New Year gifts; it was the day of 
sweet bagges and sweet waters, the materials for which 
came mainly from the garden or the field. Botany and 
medicine and chemistry were alike in their swaddling 
clothes. It was in the days of perfumed bed-sheets, 
gloves, and shoes, etc.; of the ‘‘nosegay” and the 
‘‘posy” rather than of the ‘‘ bouquet.” 
Sweet odours and savours always held a place in 
nearly all religions, in all lands; and we have our 
incense of to-day. In Elizabeth’s time, and long before, 
houses and churches and even theatres were sweetened 
or purified by the burning of dried, or the strewing of 
freshly gathered herbs. English literature, from Lord 
Bacon to Lord Beaconsfield, from Gower and Spenser 
and Shakespeare to the days of Tennyson, is redolent of 
all the sweetest leaves and flowers of English gardens. 
In Mexico and Peru the choicest of flowers were laid 
before the images in the temples, especially on great 
occasions, and it was forbidden under severe penalties 
for any one to smell them and so take away the very 
spirit of the offerings. Even to-day in South America the 
finest of Orchids are often planted on the roofs of the 
churches. 
From China and India to Peru and Brazil the learned 
have ever set a high value on perfumed things—from 
Buddha to Mahomet, and even later still. The cultured 
Brahmins have for ages hoped for and looked for the 
advent of a blue-flowered Champaca (Maitchelia champaca), 
just as our English gardeners have ever longed for a 
Blue Rose. 
