tooth; and, among the regulations of the temple at Dambedenia in the
thirteenth century, one prescribes that "every day an offering of
100,000 blossoms, and each day a different kind of flower," should be
presented. This is a striking instance, but only one of many.

"With regard to Greece, there are few of our trees and flowers," writes
Mr. Moncure Conway,[3] "which were not cultivated in the gorgeous
gardens of Epicurus, Pericles, and Pisistratus." Among the flowers
chiefly used for garlands and chaplets in ceremonial rites we find the
rose, violet, anemone, thyme, melilot, hyacinth, crocus, yellow lily,
and yellow flowers generally. Thucydides relates how, in the ninth year
of the Peloponnesian War, the temple of Juno at Argos was burnt down
owing to the priestess Chrysis having set a lighted torch too near the
garlands and then fallen asleep. The garlands caught fire, and the
damage was irremediable before she was conscious of the mischief. The
gigantic scale on which these floral ceremonies were conducted may be
gathered from the fact that in the procession of Europa at Corinth a
huge crown of myrtle, thirty feet in circumference, was borne. At Athens
the myrtle was regarded as the symbol of authority, a wreath of its
leaves having been worn by magistrates. On certain occasions the mitre
of the Jewish high priest was adorned with a chaplet of the blossoms of
the henbane. Of the further use of garlands, we are told that the
Japanese employ them very freely;[4] both men and women wearing chaplets
of fragrant blossoms. A wreath of a fragrant kind of olive is the reward
of literary merit in China. In Northern India the African marigold is
held as a sacred flower; they adorn the trident emblem of Mahádivá with
garlands of it, and both men and women wear chaplets made of its flowers
on his festivals. Throughout Polynesia garlands have been habitually
worn on seasons of "religious solemnity or social rejoicing," and in
Tonga they were employed as a token of respect. In short, wreaths seem