e leaves attain their lustre. In the East the art of floriculture
is a very ancient one, and the loves of a poet and his favorite plant
have often been recorded in story and song. With the development
of ceramics during the Tang and Sung dynasties we hear of wonderful
receptacles made to hold plants, not pots, but jewelled palaces. A
special attendant was detailed to wait upon each flower and to wash
its leaves with soft brushes made of rabbit hair. It has been written
["Pingtse", by Yuenchunlang] that the peony should be bathed by a
handsome maiden in full costume, that a winter-plum should be watered
by a pale, slender monk. In Japan, one of the most popular of the
No-dances, the Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period, is based
upon the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night, in
lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to entertain
a wandering friar. The friar is in reality no other than Hojo-Tokiyori,
the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the sacrifice is not without its
reward. This opera never fails to draw tears from a Tokio audience even
to-day.

Great precautions were taken for the preservation of delicate blossoms.
Emperor Huensung, of the Tang Dynasty, hung tiny golden bells on the
branches in his garden to keep off the birds. He it was who went off in
the springtime with his court musicians to gladden the flowers with soft
music. A quaint tablet, which tradition ascribes to Yoshitsune, the
hero of our Arthurian legends, is still extant in one of the Japanese
monasteries [Sumadera, near Kobe]. It is a notice put up for the
protection of a certain wonderful plum-tree, and appeals to us with
the grim humour of a warlike age. After referring to the beauty of the
blossoms, the inscription says: "Whoever cuts a single branch of this
tree shall forfeit a finger therefor." Would that such laws could
be enforced nowadays against those who wantonly destroy flowers and
mutilate objects of art!

Yet even in the case of pot flowers we are inclined to suspect the
selfishness of man. Why take the plants from their homes and ask them to
bloom mid strange surroundings? Is it not like asking the birds to sing
and mate cooped up in cages? Who knows but that the orchids feel stifled
by the artificial heat in your conservatories and hopelessly long for a
glimpse of their own Southern skies?

The ideal lover of flowers is he who visits them in their native haunts,
like Taoyuenming