Some flowers have qualified, some disagreeable meanings attached to them.
No man, however nearly allied to a lady, or however great his cause for displeasure may be, is allowed to say to her anything unpleasant except through the medium of flowers.
The only exception is in favour of the husband, whose privilege is seldom used; not only because it is thought more civilised to use flowers as the medium on such occasions, but more especially because marriages are now so well a.s.sorted that occasion for complaint scarcely arises on either side.
At the marriage meetings flowers having the slightest disagreeable words attached to them are strictly forbidden.
As an example of flowers having a qualified or disagreeable import take the following:--
Ragopargee.--The white lily.
"Cold but truthful, and as constant as the drops of Mount Isione."
In a small recess of Mount Isione two drops of water, clear as crystal, constantly fall, having percolated the rock above. As soon as two drops have fallen two others succeed, two being the invariable number. The interval between the fall of each pair of drops is equal and scarcely perceptible.
These drops never cease to fall night or day, and they have already by this acc.u.mulation formed a lake at the base of the mountain.
Voulervole--Convolvulus.
"False allurements!
Thy beauty is to please but for a day, Like the magnet it attracts us, And then thou wouldst make us weep By fading before our eyes.
"Go, fickle flower, For thou shalt not be mine Until more lasting; thou canst learn to be."
Mooreska.--Fuchsia.
"Thy beauty is dazzling; But, alas! its bloom will fade The nearer we approach.
For thy external attractions find no echo within.
I can never take thee to my bosom."
Romeafee.--The pink lily. This flower is a.s.sociated with excessive love of dress, and the language attached to it ends with the words.
"As glaring to the eye as Kiloom."
The gorgeous appearance of sunset is personified in poetical legends by a master spirit, called "Kiloom."
The colours of sunset are gaudy and vivid beyond measure, and cast intense hues on all objects. Our sunsets, though grand, are far from being so agreeably soothing as those in your planet, but they leave an after-glow, which gives light during the night when darkness would otherwise prevail.
Flowers are profusely used in our great festivals. I collect a fete given to me on the occasion of an anniversary, when there appeared a cavalcade of one hundred camelopards, bearing each on its back a kiosk, in which was a beautiful woman. All the camelopards were united together, as it seemed to the eye, by wreaths of flowers, though in fact these concealed strong thongs, with which the animals were really secured. Each animal was attended by a swarthy native of the country whence it came.
XXV.
FLOWERS IMPROVED BY ELECTRICITY.
"Marry nature"s gifts the one with the other, amalgamate sympathetic electricities in their due proportions, and give increased beauty to loveliness, even as ye give increased strength to iron and marble, by welding their particles into one imperishable ma.s.s."
We discovered the mode in which nature operates in the production of plants and flowers, and our discovery has enabled us to give them new forms and varied colours, to increase their natural odours and to endow them even with fragrance of which in their natural state they are devoid.
Enclosed in every seed is a portion of electricity, and on this depend, in the first instance, the life of the plant, its form and colour, its leaves and blossoms. If any crack or injury to the seed has allowed the electricity to escape, the growth of the plant is prevented.
When, after some time, the seed having been sown, its electricity has attracted a sufficient quant.i.ty of the electricity of the ground, and the two electricities are, as it were, married, their united heat and power force the seed to burst.
Part of the united electricity serves for the leaves, and when its supply is deficient the leaves wither and die, despite every effort to preserve them.
Another part serves to give form and impart colour to the plant. Green is the colour that the earth, in connection with the electricity of light, has the greatest tendency to generate.
In many plants, after the electricity has thrown off its princ.i.p.al strength in the leaves and blossoms, what remains sinks exhausted into the root, there to repose, and, like a child forsaken by its mother, the leaves become sickly and fade. When in due season the electricity again becomes invigorated by repose, and by union with the electricity of the ground, the united essences go forth again to seek the light and busy themselves in the reproduction of foliage and flowers.
The essence of the combined electricity having acquired additional power from the contact with the electricity of light and of the sun, is forced to the extremities and joints of the stem, where the forms of the flower are permanently developed and preserved.
The electricity concentrated or, rather, coagulated at the joints and extremities of the plant there forms hard gatherings, which, after being saturated with the electricity of light and of the sun, ripen and burst into flower.
There are, as you know, great resemblances in many of the operations of nature. From observing the mode in which electricity thus coagulates and forms gatherings or tumours in flower-plants, we acquired valuable knowledge, including the secret of the formation of gatherings or tumours of all kinds in the human body.
The sap of the plant is the repository or reservoir of the united electricities, from which every part of the flower is to be nourished.
PROCESS FOR CHANGING FORM.
This is an outline of our process when we would change the form of flowers:
A slip from a plant, according to the kind of flower desired, is placed in a flower-pot filled with mould, the bottom of which can be unscrewed and removed at pleasure.
As soon as the slip has taken root, and the smallest fibres have sprung from the stem of the plant, the form of the desired flower is made out of a piece of ravine metal as thin as a piece of silk.
This metal-flower, after immersion in a solution which attracts the particular electricity to be used, is enclosed in a hollow block of the same metal, corresponding to the flower form, from which it rises in a shape somewhat like that of a funnel, till it ends in a very fine point or orifice as fine and as hollow as the finest hair. This point is inserted in the root of the plant.
Underneath the metal-flower form is placed a bag of sympathetic electricity, and the mouth of the bag is so arranged as to fit closely round the form of the metal-flower in such a way that the electricity has no escape but into the hollow metal block and through its fine, hollow point. The metal point, previously to its insertion in the root of the plant, is prepared with a solution to prevent the escape of any of the electricity through its pores.
As soon as the bag is opened the electricity is attracted into the metal form, and having no other escape, proceeds instantaneously through the funnel and through the hair-tube into the plant. In doing this, it retains the form implanted by its contact with the metal model, and by the forced pa.s.sage through which it has become married with another electricity.