We have, in a previous chapter, seen that among the Bengalese there still exists the practice of hanging sickly infants in baskets upon trees, and leaving them there to die. Certain of the wild tribes of India--the Puharris, for example--when burying their infants, place them in earthen pots, and strew leaves over them: these pots they deposit at the foot of trees, sometimes covering them over with brushwood. Similar burial is given to those who die of measles or small-pox: the corpse is placed at the foot of a tree, and left in the underwood or heather, covered with leaves and branches. In about a year the parents repair to the grave-tree, and there, beneath its boughs, take part in a funeral feast. Grotius states that the Greeks and Romans believed that spirits and ghosts of men delighted to wander and appear in the sombre depths of groves devoted to the sepulture of the departed, and on this account Plato gave permission for trees to be planted over graves--as Evelyn states, “to obumbrate and refresh them.” Since then the custom of planting trees in places devoted to the burial of the dead has become universal, and the trees thus selected have in consequence come to be regarded as funereal. As a general rule, the trees to which this funereal signification has been attached are those of a pendent or weeping character, and those which are distinguished by their dark and sombre foliage, black berries and fruits, and melancholy-looking blossoms. Others again have been planted in God’s acre on account of the symbolical meaning attached to their form or nature. Thus, whilst the Aloe, the Yew, and the Cypress are suggestive of life, from their perpetual verdure, they typify in floral symbology respectively grief, sorrow, and mourning. The Bay is an emblem of the resurrection, inasmuch as, according to Sir Thomas Browne, when to all outward appearance it is dead and withered, it will unexpectedly revive from the root, and its dry leaves resume their pristine vitality. Evergreen trees and shrubs, whose growth is like a pyramid or spire, the apex of which points heavenward, are deemed emblematic of eternity, and as such are fitly classed among funereal trees: the Arbor Vitæ and the Cypress are examples. The weeping Birch and Willow and the Australian Casuarina, with their foliage mournfully bending to the earth, fitly find their place in churchyards as personifications of woe.