Introduction. 
3 
velopes the antediluvian history of mankind. Phillips, and 
other painstaking investigators, have, it is true, not contented 
themselves with general allusions to the unfathomable antiquity 
of the typical uses which were made of 
“ Flowers, the sole luxury that Nature knew 
In Eden’s pure and guiltless garden,” 
but have endeavoured to resuscitate from their long sleep of 
thousands of years, the irretrievably lost floral systems with 
which the mighty Indian, Egyptian, Chaldean, and ancient 
Chinese nations “wiled away the hours.” 
Of all peoples, however, of whom we appear to possess any 
reliable records, the Greeks may be accounted the earliest 
florigraphists, and they do seem not only to have entertained 
the most passionate love for flowers, but to have adapted them 
as typical of every interesting occurrence, public or private. 
Loudon, speaking of the continual symbolic use made by the- 
Hellenic race of flowers, says, “ not only were they then, as 
now, the ornament of beauty, and of the altars of the gods, 
but the youths crowned themselves with them in the fetes, 
the priests in religious ceremonies, and the guests in convivial 
meetings. Garlands of flowers were suspended from the gates 
of the city in times of rejoicing. 
the philosophers wore crowns of flowers, and the warriors orna¬ 
mented their foreheads with them in times of triumph.” We 
read in Aristophanes that a market for flowers was held in 
Athens, where vendors rapidly disposed of the baskets of 
blooms which they proffered to the admiring bystanders. With 
the natives of ancient Greece, birth, marriage, burial, and every 
ceremony of any importance whatever was marked and dis¬ 
tinctly comprehended by means of its floral accompaniment. 
Emblematic of relief to the mother, and of wishes for good 
fortune to the child, was the Palm ; young wooers delicately 
intimated their passion by decorating the doorways of their 
beloved ones’ residences with garlands of 
“ All those token flowers that tell 
What words can ne’er express so well.” 
The illness of the inmates was indicated by Buckthorn and 
Laurel hung across the lintels: whilst the conclusion of this 
