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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,* &e.; 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 : 
“ 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. 
