Flower-beds used, like beds in the kitchen garden, to be raised a little above the path, with nothing to divide them from it, till about the beginning of the seventeenth century the fashion of bordering them was introduced either by the Italians or the French. Daisies, periwinkles, feverfew, hyssop, lavender, rosemary, rue, sage, wormwood, camomile, thyme and box, were used for this purpose: a German horticulturist observes that hyssop was preferred as the most convenient; box however gradually obtained the preference. The Jesuit Rapin claims for the French the merit of bringing this plant into use, and embellishes his account of it by one of those school-boy fictions which passed for poetry in his days, and may still pass for it in his country. He describes a feast of the rural gods: _Adfuit et Cybele, Phrygias celebrata per urbes; Ipsaque cum reliquis Flora invitata deabus Venit, inornatis, ut erat neglecta, capillis; Sive fuit fastus, seu fors fiducia formæ. Non illi pubes ridendi prompta pepercit, Neglectam risere. Deam Berecynthia mater Semotam à turba, casum miserata puellæ, Exornat, certâque comam sub lege reponit, Et viridi imprimis buxo (nam buxifer omnis Undique campus erat) velavit tempora nymphæ. Reddidit is speciem cultus, cœpitque videri Formosa, et meruit: novus hinc decor additus ori._ _Ex illo, ut Floram decuit cultura, per artem Floribus ille decor posthac quæsitus, et hortis: Quem tamen Ausonii cultores, quemque Pelasgi Nescivere, suos nullâ qui lege per hortos Plantabant flores, nec eos componere norant Areolis, tonsâque vias describere buxo. Culta super reliquas Francis topiaria gentes, Ingenium seu mite soli cœlique benigni Temperies tantam per sese adjuverit artem; Sive illam egregiæ solers industria gentis Extuderit, seris seu venerit usus ab annis._