The Myrtle is not a very important plant nowadays, though its berries are still eaten and myrtle wreaths used to be worn by the bride at every wedding. In classical times it was sacred to Venus, but the victors in the Olympian games were also crowned with myrtle, and the magistrates at Athens had the same privilege. It is no longer used as a medicine and for making wine. It is really a native of Persia, but has been introduced to the Levant, Italy, France, and Spain. It is along the Riviera that one finds a very curious and interesting industry. This is the manufacture of perfumes and essences from the petals of flowers. A great many different flowers are used, such as the Garden Violet, Mignonette (a native of Egypt imported in 1752), Lily of the Valley, Tuberose, "the sweetest flower for scent that grows," Jonquil (_Narcissus jonquilla_), Heliotrope (imported from Peru in 1757), Spanish Jasmine (_J. grandiflorum_), which is a native of Nepaul, and was brought to Europe in 1629, and various Roses.[54] [54] Heuzé, _Les Plantes Industrielles_. Most of the following details are obtained from this valuable work. These Roses have had a long, interesting, and honourable history. No one knows when they were first cultivated. Solomon had his rose-gardens at Jericho. Queen Cleopatra spent some £400 on roses in one day, and Nero is said to have beaten this record by wasting 4,000,000 sesterces (£30,000) in roses for a single banquet. Rosewater is said to have been first produced by an Arab physician called Rhazés in the tenth century. When Sultan Saladin recovered Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, the pavement and walls of the Mosque of Omar were washed and purified with rosewater. That stout warrior Thibault IV, Count de Brie et de Champagne, brought back roses from Damascus on his return to his native land. That was the origin of the valuable Provence roses. The Lancastrians chose a Provence rose as their badge at the beginning of the Civil Wars of the Roses in England. Otto of Roses, or the essential oil, was discovered by Princess Nour Jehan at the court of the Great Mogul, and she received as her reward a pearl necklace worth 30,000 rupees. The price of otto of roses seems to have been about £320 per pound in Persia and India when the traveller Tavernier visited those countries in 1616. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, peers of France had to present bouquets and crowns of roses to the assembled Parliament. At present there are very important rose plantations in France,[55] Bulgaria,[56] and in the Fayoum in Egypt. In France about ten or twelve thousand roses are grown on two and a half acres. The season is from April to May. Women gather from twenty to twenty-five pounds daily, and obtain from twopence to threepence for two and a half pounds. Each tree will give about a quarter of a pound of roses. The petals are distilled to make rosewater. [55] 4,400,000 pounds of roses were produced in France in one year.