CHAPTER XVII.

HYACINTH-ORIENTAL HYACINTH-COLOURS OF FLOWERS -PLANTS REARED IN WATER-FABLE OF THE ANCIENTS RESPECTING THE HYACINTH-WILD HYACINTH-STAR OF BETHLEHEM-ASPHODEL.

"Blush not, if o'er your heart be stealing,
A love for things which have no feeling."

THE hyacinth is a favourite flower of the cultivator, and much cherished on the garden bed. It seems, however, more especially the flower of the lady florist, and to belong as much to the parlour as the garden. It may be reared there when the atmosphere is chilly, and the earth too damp to allow the delicate to venture abroad and tend the flowers out of doors. To those who are fond of flowers there is pleasure in watching the progress of the beautiful white fibres which descend from the bulbs into the water, tinged with the hue of purple or green,

which is reflected from the vase which contains them, and in watching the gradual expansion of the beautiful bells which crown the stem. The lament of Milton's Eve, when quitting the lovely bowers of the fairest garden which this world ever knew, accords well with female feelings generally on the subject of flowers.

To a

woman her flowers seem almost as her friends.

"Must I then leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil! these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods! where I had hoped to spend
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow;
My early visitation, and my last

At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening buds, and gave ye names:
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount ?"

Two species only of hyacinth, besides the native woodland flower, are reared in our gardens. The Oriental hyacinth has however many hundred varieties, distinguished chiefly by the various colours or forms of the flowers.

In the neighbourhoods of Aleppo and Bagdad, the Eastern hyacinth is very abundant, growing wild on the plains, and attracting by its beauty the notice of travellers. It is much valued throughout the East, and forms a conspicuous part in the bouquet destined to convey the sentiments of Oriental ladies. The language of flowers in the East seems to have been brought to a regular system, and each flower has a definite meaning; but unfortunately in Europe it is too vague, and too ill understood, to be by any means a safe medium of conveying any sentiment. Each person, in our country, has a system of his own, which, like many systems of short-hand writing, can be read but by him in whom it originates.

To Eastern poets the hyacinth presents a famous subject of simile. Hafiz compares his mistress's hair to the hyacinth, and hyacinthine locks, probably originally an Oriental comparison, have been long expressive of graceful tresses, because the petals of the hyacinth turn

at the points. This bending up of the tips

of the flower, is more apparent in the wood hyacinth, the poets' blue-bell, than in the garden flower.

The hyacinth is very common throughout Greece, and in some other warm climates of Europe; it blooms in the former country about February. The Dutch have taken much pains in its culture, and to them we owe the greater number of kinds of this flower. They are said to have had in Holland, in the year 1620, more than two thousand varieties of hyacinth, while in England, at this period, the flower was scarcely known.

For many years the hyacinth was only a single flower, but it is now an object with the florist to produce large double bells. Brilliance of tint is, however, the chief point aimed at in the culture of this flower.

It is remarkable how seldom in the dress of flowers we meet with any sombre colours. The few blossoms which are of a dull purple hue belong to poisonous plants; brown flowers are almost peculiar to night-scented plants, and

scarcely an instance occurs of a blossom approaching to black. The black hollyhocks and roses, of which we often hear, are in reality of a deep purplish red. A spot of almost pure black is seen in the midst of the white petals of the bean-flower, and was, by the ancients, believed to be worn as mourning, on account of the supposed pernicious effects of the bean.

The hyacinth is one of the few flowers which will bear the saline atmosphere. It seems also to grow quite as well with its root immersed in water as when fixed in the soil. Moisture being requisite for the growth and fertility of vegetation, it was formerly thought by many philosophers that vegetables derived their nutriment solely from water, and that the earth was merely useful to them as affording them the means of stability. Du Hamel, who advocated this opinion, raised several young trees by water alone. He even reared an oak to the age of eight years, when it died from some neglect; but as its roots were found at the time of its decay to be in a very unsound state, and it had