urope under the botanical name of
_Ocymum villosum_, and in India as the _Toolsee_) is held sacred by the
Hindus. Toolsee was a disciple of Vishnu. Desiring to be his wife she
excited the jealousy of Lukshmee by whom she was transformed into the
herb named after her.[078]

THE TULIP.

Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked.

_Southey_.

The TULIP (_tulipa_) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without
fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily
of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in
Syria.

The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called
Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban.

What crouds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads, of every hue
Bowing before that veiled and awful face
Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?

_Moore_.

The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so
great an excess in Holland.

With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart,
At a vast price, with one loved root to part.

_Crabbe_.

About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in
three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip
(the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres
of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of
L5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its
height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that
some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly
secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of
it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is
unique!"

A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing
on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took
up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions
were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a
thousand Royal feasts.[079]

The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in
Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so
late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon,
seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the _Fanny Kemble_;
and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his
ca