136 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and potions, was carried on by wise and practical housewives 

 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 

 gloves and shoes,* &c. ; 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 redo- 

 lent of all the sweetest leaves and flowers of English gardens. 



From China and India to Mexico 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 (Mitchelia champaca), just as our English 

 gardeners have ever longed for a Blue Rose. 



Old Rustic Customs. 

 Old men have told me of the days when women placed sprigs 

 of Costmary, Ladslove, Rosemary, and Lavender, with perhaps 

 a flower or two, in their bosoms when they went to church in 

 the stifling hot summer days, and the memory of such customs 

 calls up a picture drawn in poesy by Ovid,f when he says : 

 u Her hair is smoothed with a comb : now she decks herself with 

 Rosemary, again with Violets or Roses, sometimes wears white 

 Lilies, washes twice a day her face in springs that trickle from 

 the top of the Pegasean wood ; and twice she dips her body in 

 the stream." 



* Queen Elizabeth had an exceedingly fine nose, and loved perfumes ; 

 even her shoes were saturated with it ; and she had a cloak of peau 

 d'Espagne worth an enormous sum. Wherever the Virgin Queen visited, 

 " the sweetynge of the house " was an important matter, and items of 

 expenditure under this head are frequent in old records. This " sweetynge " 

 was done by fresh flowers and herbs, by perfumed waters or spirits, and by 

 the burning of fragrant substances. 



f Ovid, Met. xii. 409-415. b.c. 43-a.d. 18. 



