PREFACE. 
Vii 
On searching the historic page, in all ages vre 
find flowers were in requisition at festivals as well 
as at funerals, and among the Heathens, the Jews, 
and the Christians, they were used as emblems. 
In the East, in particular, we have abundant 
proof that the feelings were expressed by them, 
and that there were flowers to represent hope, 
love, grief, joy, care, fear, hatred, and every other 
sentiment; and that the acceptance or refusal of 
a proffered flower had great effect on the one pre¬ 
senting it, as we find in a passage in the Bride of 
Abydos, where Selim allows the rose offered by 
Zuleika to remain untouched, which leads her to 
exclaim— 
«* What! not receive my favorite flower ? 
Nay, then I am indeed unblcst.” 
In the West, too, we read of the homage paid and 
sentiment attached to trees and flowers; and 
among the numerous instances we find the reward 
of the victor was the laurel, and the chaplet of 
the poet the bay; palms were the emblem of tri¬ 
umph,—cypress of mourning—and the holly of 
festival^. We are told of the respect paid to the 
oak by our Boman and British ancestors, and the 
solemnity with which the Druids regarded tho 
mistletoe and the crab apple; and tho supersti- 
