i66 TB.E ASSOCIATIO'NS OF FLOWERS 
My early visitation^ and my last 
At even^ which I bred up with tender hand 
From the first opening budSj and gave ye names : 
Who now shall rear ye to the sun^ or rank 
Your tribeSj and water from the ambrosial fount?” 
Two species only of hyacinth, besides the native wood- 
land flower, are reared in our gardens. The Oriental hya- 
cinth has, however, many hundred varieties, distinguished 
chiefly by the various colours or forms of the flowers. 
In the neighbourhoods of Aleppo and Bagdad the East- 
ern hyacinth is very abundant, growing wild on the plains, 
and attracting by its beauty the notice of travellers. It is 
much valued throughout the East, and forms a conspicu- 
ous part in the bouquet destined to convey the sentiments 
of Oriental ladies. The language of flowers in the East 
seems to have been brought to a regular system, and each 
flower has a definite meaning ; but unfortunately in Europe 
it is too vague, and too ill understood, to be bv any means 
a safe medium of conveying any sentiment. Each person, 
in our country, has a system of his owm, which, like many 
systems of shorthand writing, can be read but by him in 
whom it originates. 
To Eastern poets the hyacinth presents a famous subject 
of simile. Hafiz compares his mistress’s hair to the hya- 
cinth ; and hyacinthine locks, probably originally an Ori- 
ental comparison, have been long expressive of graceful 
tresses, because the petals of the hyacinth turn up at the 
points. This bending up of the tips of the flow^er is more 
apparent in the wood hyacinth, the poet’s bluebell, than 
in the garden flower. 
The hyacinth is very common throughout Greece, and 
in some other w^arm climates of Europe. It blooms in the 
former country about February, The Dutch have taken 
much pains in its culture ; and to them we owe the greater 
number of kinds of this flower. They are said to have 
had in Holland in the year 1620 more than two thousand 
varieties of hyacinth ; w^hile in England at this period the 
flower was scarcely known. 
For many years the hyacinth was only a single flower; 
but it is now an object with the florist to produce large 
double bells. Brilliance of tint is, however, the chief 
point aimed at in the culture of this flow^er. 
