Instances are so numerous that it is impossible to do more than quote some of the most important, as recorded in our own and other countries.

For detailed accounts of these funereal floral rites it would be necessary to consult the literature of the past from a very early period, and the result of such inquiries would form material enough for a goodly-sized volume.

Therespect for the dead among the early Greeks was very great, and Miss Lambert[6] quotes the complaint of Petala to Simmalion, in the Epistles of Alciphron, to show how special was the dedication of flowers to the dead:--"I have a lover who is a mourner, not a lover; he sends me garlands and roses as if to deck a premature grave, and he says he weeps through the live-long night." The chief flowers used by them for strewing over graves were the polyanthus, myrtle, and amaranth; the rose, it would appear from Anacreon, having been thought to possess a special virtue for the dead:-- "When pain afflicts and sickness grieves, Its juice the drooping heart relieves; And after death its odours shed A pleasing fragrance o'er the dead." And Electra is represented as complaining that the tomb of her father, Agamemnon, had not been duly adorned with myrtle-- "With no libations, nor with myrtle boughs, Were my dear father's manes gratified." The Greeks also planted asphodel and mallow round their graves, as the seeds of these plants were supposed to nourish the dead.

Mourners, too, wore flowers at the funeral rites, and Homer relates how the Thessalians used crowns of amaranth at the burial of Achilles.

The Romans were equally observant, and Ovid, when writing from the land of exile, prayed his wife--"But do you perform the funeral rites for me when dead, and offer chaplets wet with your tears.