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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



1888 Mr. W. Flinders Petrie, while excavating in the cemetery at 

 Hawara, found some floral wreaths, supposed to have been 

 made by Greek residents in the land of the Pharaohs — not in the 

 time of the Pharaohs, it is true, but certainly as early as the 

 first century before the Christian era. One at least of these 

 wreaths is almost entirely made of the flowers of the " clustered 

 Narcissus," as immortalised by the poets of Greece, and, being 

 now preserved at Kew, those who care to do so may see with 

 their own eyes actual blossoms of Narcissus Tazetta as culled 

 in Egypt nearly two thousand years ago. 



Then the earliest of Greek physicians used or recommended 

 the roots of Narcissi for medical purposes ; and in the making of 

 funereal garlands we are absolutely certain that the blossoms of 

 N. Tazetta were used by the Greeks at least in the century 

 before the Christian era. 



You may take it for granted that the Narcissus was one of 

 the most highly prized of all the native flowers of Southern and 

 Eastern Europe and Northern Africa at a very early date in the 

 world's history, because all the earliest and greatest poets have 

 mentioned it time after time. 



The very earliest allusion I can find as to the culture of the 

 Narcissus appears to have been made in the works of Theophrastus 

 of Eresus (b.c. 374-286). As we have no proof to the contrary, 

 I shall assume his Narcissus to have belonged to the genus so- 

 called to-day, and what he says of it is this : "Its leaves spread 

 on the ground like the Asphodel, but broader, like those of Lilies; 

 its stalk is void of leaves, and bears at the top a herbaceous 

 flower, and a large dark-coloured fruit enclosed in a membra- 

 nous vessel of an oblong figure. This fruit, falling down, sprouts 

 spontaneously, although some gather it for solving. The roots 

 also are planted , which are large, round, and fleshy." 



The Narcissi in the Literature of the Seventeenth Century. 



We need scarcely wonder that the Narcissus was one of the 

 earliest of garden or cultivated flowers, since its fragrance, its 

 size, its colour, its exquisite form, and its timeliness, even in the 

 wild or native state, are so remarkable ; but it is not until we 

 get down to the early sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries that 

 we find out, by direct written evidence, how popular these flowers 



