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LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 109 
The curling petals furnished Milton with a simile in de¬ 
scribing Adam. 
“ Hyacinthine locks 
Round from his parted forelock manly hung 
Clustering.” 
Collins, too, speaks of 
“ The youth whose locks divinely Bpreading 
Like vernal hyacinths.” 
The poetical Hyacinth of the ancients was supposed to 
wear / 
“ His bitter sorrows painted on his bosom.” 
“ As poets feigned, from Ajax’ streaming blood 
Arose, with grief inscribed, a mournful flower.” 
Young. 
“ In the flower he weaved 
The sad impression of his sighs ; which bears 
Ai — Ai — displayed in funeral characters.” 
Sandys’s Ovid. 
“ Camus, reverend sir, went footing slow, 
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, 
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge 
Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.” 
Milton. 
Beware, Oleander. 
Birtli, Dittany of Crete. 
When Juno, under the name of Lucina, presided at the 
birth of children, she wore a wreath of dittany. Its good 
odor and medicinal qualities, which caused it to be esteemed 
by the ancients, make it still'valued. It is a native of the 
isle of Crete. 
In Martyn’s Botany we read, “ Dittany of Crete has the 
small purple flowers collected in loose, nodding heads; the 
stalks are pubescent, purplish, and send out small branches 
I 
from their sides by pairs; the leaves are round, thick, and so 
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