The Hindu races are passionately fond of flowers, and their ancient Sanscrit books and poems are full of allusions to their beauty and symbolic character. With them, the flower of the field is venerated as a symbol of fecundity. In their mythology, at the beginning of all things there appeared in the waters the expanded Lotus-blossom, the emblematic flower of life and light; the Sun, Moon, and Stars are flowers in the celestial garden; the Sun’s ray is a full-blown Rose, which springs from the waters and feeds the sacrificial fire; the Lightning is a garland of flowers thrown by Narada. _Pushpa_ (flower), or _Pushpaka_ (flowery), is the epithet applied to the luminous car of the god Kuvera, which was seized by Râvana, the royal monster of Lankâ, and recaptured by the demi-god Râma, the incarnation of Vishnu. The bow of Kâma, the Indian Cupid, darts forth flowers in the guise of arrows. The Indian poetic lover gathers from the flowers a great number of chaste and beautiful symbols. The following description of a young maiden struck down by illness is a fair example of this:--“All of a sudden the blighting glance of unpropitious fortune having fallen on that Rose-cheeked Cypress, she laid her head on the pillow of sickness; and in the flower-garden of her beauty, in place of the Damask Rose, sprang up the branch of the Saffron. Her fresh Jasmine, from the violence of the burning illness, lost its moisture, and her Hyacinth, full of curls, lost all its endurance from the fever that consumed her.” It was with the classic Greeks, however, that floral symbolism reached its zenith: not only did the Hellenic race entertain an extraordinary passion for flowers, but with consummate skill they devised a code of floral types and emblems adapted to all phases of public and private life. As Loudon writes, when speaking of the emblematic use made by the Greeks of flowers:--“Not only were they then, as now, the ornament of a beauty, and of the altars of the gods, but the youths crowned themselves with them in the fêtes, the priests in religious ceremonies, and the guests in convivial meetings. Garlands of flowers were suspended from the gates of the city in the times of rejoicing ... the philosophers wore crowns of flowers, and the warriors ornamented their foreheads with them in times of triumph.” The Romans, although they adopted most of the floral symbolic lore of their Hellenic predecessors, and in the case of emblematic garlands were particularly refined, were still evidently not so passionately fond of floral symbolism as were the Greeks; and with the decadence of the Empire, the attractive art gradually fell into oblivion.