FLOWER LEGENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18278, 20 December 1922, Page 8 (Supplement)

FLOWER LEGENDS.

Tradition lias it that attar of roses was first used by Nour-ichan Moore's Xourmahal, otherwise " Light of the Harem.

Walking one day in her garden, through which ran a tiny stream of rose water, alio spied its surface oily particles, which attracted her attention. She, in sheer idleness, collected them, and found them deliciously fragrant. The result was a new industry among her husband's loval subjects. Turkey supplies the best and purest of the scent. That which comes from India is usually adulterated with oil of lemon grass. Violet essence i& one of the costliest perfumes. Cassia buds come fiorn the shrub acacia, grown all over Italy, in Spain, .Algiers, and Tunis. It looks like a small round tuft of orange lioss silk, and yields a delicate scent known poetically, as «' Moonlight of the Grove." Perhaps the most odd of all vegetable scents is the South American I'mari. which is obtained hy raising the bark of the tree trunk and slipping bits of raw cotton under it. They remain there for a month, are taken out dripping with a sweet smelling sap, which is pressed out and sold in perfume shops. Orris rout is the bulb of the Italian iris, and grows chiefly in Tuscany. Musk, according to the Koran, forms one of the delights of the lost paradise, the floor of which was made of a mixture of musk and fine flour. It is an animal product, coming from the male of the musk deer, which is found m the highest Himalaya mountains. More than one Eastern conqueror .las mixed murk in the mortar of Ins triumphal mosque, there to chant then- pa-ns ,n sweet-smelling odours long after he hnn«el£ ba s wimbled into dust.