Glimpses of Modern Persia —1 
GARDEN OF THE ZIL-I-SULTAN, ISPAHAN 
central space is occupied by a simple 
shallow cylinder of cement, adorned with 
potted plants. Thus the suggestion of a 
fountain is retained, and the attendant ex¬ 
pense avoided. 
It is hard to conceive of a human, in any 
land, who extracts more of genuine enjoy¬ 
ment from such a garden as he may possess 
than does the intelligent Persian. The 
morning, up to the time when business 
necessitates his departure for the bazaars, 
and evening, after his day’s wrangling and 
forereaching are over, find him seated in some 
shady spot or slowly promenading the broad 
walks among his flowers, sipping the tea 
which attendants bring him at incredibly 
brief intervals, inhaling the smoke of num¬ 
berless cigarettes, dreaming, plotting business 
stratagems, but worshipping continually. He 
does not cull flowers. Few Persians do. 
They seem rather to look upon the habit as 
barbarous. A Persian of refinement is much 
more likely to have a small rug spread before 
a particularly fine blossom, pass his hour in 
silent admiration, and then go away leaving 
it intact. 
But for all this, there is little of horticul¬ 
ture in the way of grafting, or other pro¬ 
cesses looking to the development of new 
types. To this the Persian gardener, who 
is after all little more than a painstaking 
laborer, is not schooled. 11 is for this reason, 
probablv, that the flowers to be found in a 
Persian garden are mainly of the simpler sort, 
such as chrysanthemums, asters, hollyhocks, 
the narcissus, hyacinth and tulip, pinks, 
larkspur, violets and the like. All these 
attain distinguished size and color. The 
white lily is most highly prized, but the 
rose is without doubt the Persian flower. 
Even in its decadence, Persia is a land of 
roses. They bloom in great prodigality and 
with a diversity of form and color which is 
little short of astounding. The Persian roses 
seem, though it is perhaps the effect of 
contrast with their surroundings, to have a 
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