One day the merchant, being invited to breakfast with a friend, gave his apprentice the key of his office and a halfpenny to buy a loaf of bread; but the apprentice returned, saying he could not get the door open, and though he had bought his bread, could not eat it without the _usual flavour_ of cheese. “Go, fool, and rub your bread on the door, which is _almost_ as satisfying as the bottle.” Doubtless it was. Persia is not a favourable place for flowers; the gardeners merely sow in patches, irrigate them, and let them come up as they will. Zinnias, convolvulus, Marvel of Peru of all colours, and growing at times as a handsome bushy plant, five feet high, covered with blossoms; asters, balsams, wallflower, chrysanthemums, marigolds, China and moss roses, or “gul-i-soorkh” (from these the rose-water is made), and the perfume in the gardens from them is at times overpowering, are the usual flowers. Yellow and orange single roses are common; they are, however, devoid of scent. The noisette rose, too, is much grown, and the nestorange, a delicately-scented single rose, the tree growing to a great size. The favourite plant is the narcissus; it grows wild in many parts of Persia. Huge bundles of the cut flowers are seen in the dwellings of rich and poor; the scent is very powerful. The Persians cut small rings of coloured paper, cloth, or velvet, and _ornament_ (?) the flower by placing the rings of divers colours between the first and second rows of petals, and the effect is strange, and not unpleasing, leading one to suppose on seeing it for the first time that a bouquet of new varieties has been cut, for so transparent a cheat does not strike one as possible, and a newcomer often examines them with admiration, failing to detect, or rather not suspecting, any deception. The ordinary _Lilium candidum_ is much admired in the gardens of the great, and is called “Gul-i-Mariam” (Mary’s flower). A large proportion of the narcissus are double; it is the single variety that the Persians _ornament_. The tulip, too, grows wild, and the colchicum, also the cyclamen. Above Shiraz, however, there are few wild flowers until one nears the Caspian; but below Kazeroon, in the spring, the road is literally a flower-bespangled way, blazing with various tulips and hyacinths, cyclamens, etc.