70 
Jasmine. 
The perfumes emitted by plants are so much stronger in 
tropical climes than in our own land, that when Europeans 
first visit India they are quite overpowered by the influence of 
many of them, especially of the large jasmine. The early 
fragrance of these flowers is described as delicious, one au¬ 
thority stating that even the dews are impregnated with their 
odour, rendering a morning walk delightful. In the Orient, 
jasmine is deemed emblematic of the sweets of friendship. It 
is a very favourite flower with the Hindoo ladies, who perfume 
their apartments and their hair with the blossoms of the large 
flowering kind, known as the champdca. Sir William Jones 
says the Brahmins of this province insist that the blue campac 
flowers only in Paradise ; and in Marsden’s “ Sumatra we 
read that the Sultan of Menangcabow keeps the flower cham¬ 
pdca that is blue and to be found in no other country but his, 
being yellow elsewhere; and in allusion to this flower Moore 
says: 
“A tear-drop glistened 
Within his eyelids, like the spray 
From Eden’s fountain, when it lies 
On the blue flower which, Brahmins say, 
Blooms nowhere but in Paradise.” 
The golden-coloured champac, of which Niebuhr speaks, 
Moore, in his “ Lalla Rookh,” thus sweetly introduces: 
“ The maid of India, blest again to hold 
In her full lap the champack’s leaves of gold, 
Thinks of the time when, by the Ganges’ flood. 
Her little playmates scattered many a bud 
Upon her long black hair, with glassy gleam 
Just dripping from the consecrated stream.” 
In his notes to the above poem, Moore remarks that the 
appearance of the blossom of the gold-coloured campac, or 
jasmine, on the black hair of the Hindoo women, has supplied 
the Sanscrit poets with many elegant allusions. It cannot be 
denied that this exquisitely scented flower supplied the Irish 
Anacreon himself with many beautiful comparisons; what 
sweeter could he say of Arabian brides than that they are 
“ As delicate and fair 
As the white jasmine flowers they wear ” ? 
Of this last-named plant Sir J. E. Smith relates the follow¬ 
ing anecdote: A Pope having dreamed that a great quantity 
