FLORAL DECORATIONS. 85 
graves, but this is only for the passing hour as they soon 
fade and wither. 
To briefly trace this custom along back to remote periods 
we can do it m no way better than‘to quote from Walton 
in his Lives of the Anglers, when, referring to the customs 
as observed at a funeral he attended in 1631, he says :— 
“To the place of his burial some mournful friends repair¬ 
ed, and, as Alexander did to the grave of the famous 
Achilles, so they strewed his with an abundance of curious 
and costly flowers.” But it was a natural transition from 
the strewing of flowers to the sowing of seeds or trans¬ 
planting plants and so has sprung up the custom of culti¬ 
vating flowers upon graves, which is by far the most beau¬ 
tiful style of decorating It appears, from an old inscrip¬ 
tion at Ravenna, and another at Milan, that the Greeks 
and Romans often annexed, as a codicil to their wills, that 
Roses should annually be strewn and planted on their 
graves. The same custom found its way into England at 
an early date. An English writer says that, “ in 1653 a 
citizen of London named Edward Rose left the sum of £20 
to be laid out in the purchase of an acre of land for the 
benefit of the poor of the village of Barnes, in the same 
county, as long as they should keep Rose trees growing 
upon his grave.” 
