











8 THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
and almost formed, by Aimé Martin; and 
the earlier works on the subject were only 
translations or adaptations from the French: 
but English writers have a good deal altered 
and modified it since; and as new flowers 
come yearly to us from other lands, every 
fresh vocabulary may contain additional words 
or sentence, even aS our own tongue grows 
by grafts from other languages. 
We have, in this little volume, added about 
thirty new significant blossoms to the old 
ones; and our fair readers will thus find “a 
tongue” for the flowers which bloom in the 
conservatory and greenhouse, as well as for 
our old garden favourites, and will not be 
condemned during the long winter months to 
floral silence. 
But to begin our flower legends. The 
Laurel, sacred to Fame, was, as the Greeks 
fabled, the daughter of the river Pineus, 
transformed to a shrub. Wordsworth has 
told her tale so delightfully, and drawn so 
noble a moral from the myth, that we will 
give Daphne’s story in his words. 

