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Bakawali, says “ the Tulip immersed itself in blood because of the
jealousy it entertained of her charming lips ! ” When bidding adieu
to the fairy, Taj-ul-muluk says : ‘ I quit this garden carrying in my
heart, like the Tulip, the wound of unhappy love—I go, my head
covered with dust, my heart bleeding, my breast fevered.’ ” The
Tulip is supposed to have been brought from Persia to the Levant,
and it was introduced into Western Europe about the middle of
the sixteenth century by Busbeck, ambassador from the Emperor
of Germany to the Sublime Porte, who to his astonishment found
Tulips on the road between Adrianople and Constantinople
blooming in the middle of winter. In Europe, they soon became
universal favourites, and were imported into England in 1577.-----
Holland, about the middle of the seventeenth century, a perfecif
mania for possessing rare sorts seized all classes of persons.
From 1634 to 1637 inclusive all classes in all the great cities of
Holland became infecfled with the Tulipomania. A single root of
a particular species, called the Viceroy, was exchanged, in the true
Dutch taste, for the following articles:—2 lasts of Wheat, 4 of Rye,
4 fat oxen, 3 fat swine, 12 fat sheep, 2 hogsheads of wine, 4 tuns of
beer, 2 tons of butter, 1000 pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit
of clothes, and a silver beaker—value of the whole, 2500 florins.
These Tulips afterwards were sold according to the weight of the
roots. Four hundred perits (something less than a grain) of
Admiral Liefken, cost 4400 florins; 446 ditto of Admiral Van der Eyk,
1620 florins ; 106 perits Schilder cost 1615 florins ; 200 ditto Semper
Augustus, 5500 florins ; 410 ditto Viceroy, 3000 florins, &c. The
species Semper A ugustus has been often sold for 2000 florins ; and it
once happened that there were only two roots of it to be had, the
one at Amsterdam, and the other at Haarlem. For a root of this
species one agreed to give 4600 florins, together with a new carriage,
two grey horses, and a complete harness. Another agreed to give
for a root twelve acres of land ; for those who had not ready money
promised their moveable and immoveable goods, houses and lands,
houses and lands, cattle and clothes. The trade was followed not
only by mercantile people, but also by all classes of society. At
first, everyone won and no one lost. Some of the poorest people
gained, in a few months, houses, coaches and horses, and figured
away like the first characflers in the land. In every town some
tavern was selecfted which served as an exchange, where high and
low traded in flowers, and confirmed their bargains with the most
sumptuous entertainments. They formed laws for themselves, and
had their notaries and clerks. During the time of the Tulipomania, a
speculator often offered and paid large sums for a root which he never
received, nor ever wished to receive. Another sold roots which
he never possessed or delivered. Often did a nobleman purchase
of a chimney-sweep Tulips to the amount of 2000 florins, and sell
them at the same time to a farmer, and neither the nobleman,
chimney-sweep, nor farmer had roots in their possession, or wished
to possess them. Before the Tulip season was over, more roots
were sold and purchased, bespoke, and promised to be delivered,
than in all probability were to be found in the gardens of Holland ;
and when Semper Augustus was not to be had, which happened twice,
no species perhaps was oftener purchased and sold. In the space
of three years, as Munting tells us, more than ten millions were
expended in this trade, in only one town of Holland. The evil
rose to such a pitch, that the States of Holland were under the
necessity of interfering; the buyers took the alarm ; the bubble, like
the South Sea scheme, suddenly burst; and as, in the outset, all
were winners, in the winding up, very few escaped without loss.
T U T S A N .—The Hypericum Androsemum was in former days
called Tutsan, or Tutsayne, a word derived from the French name,
Toute-saine, which was applied to the plant, according to Lobel,
“ because, like the Panacea, it cures all sickness and diseases.”
The St. John’s Wort [H. perforatum) was also called Tutsan.
T U R N I P .—The Turnip [Brassica Rapa) was considered by
Columella and Pliny as next to corn in value and utility. Pliny
mentions some of the Turnips of his times as weighing forty
pounds each. In Westphalia, when a young peasant goes
wooing, if Turnips be set before him, they signify that he is totally
unacceptable to the girl he would court. To dream of Turnips
denotes fruitless toil.
U N S H O E -T H E -H O R S E .—The Hippocrepis comosa, from
its horseshoe-shaped legumes, is supposed, upon the doiflrine of
signatures, to have the magical power of causing horses to cast
their shoes. This Vetch is the Sferracavallo of the Italians, who
ascribe to it the same magical property. Grimm, however, considers
that the Springwort [Euphorbia Lathyris) is, from its powerful
adfion on metals, the Italian Sferracavallo. The French give a
similar extraordinary property to the Rest-Harrow [Ononis arvensis);
and it is also allotted to the Mo'onwort [Botrychium Lunaria) :—
“ Whose virtue’s such,
It in the pasture, only with a touch,
Unshoes the new-shod steed.”— IVithei^s,
UPAS.^—^The deadly Upas of Ja v a has the terrible reputation
of being a tree which poisons by means of its noxious exhalations.
Two totally distindt trees have been called the Upas,—one, the
Antjar [Autiaris toxicaria), is a tree attaining a height of one
hundred feet ; the other, the Chetik, is a large creeping shrub
peculiar to Java. Neither of them, however, answers to the description
of the poisonous Upas, which rises in the “ Valley of Death,”
and which was seen and reported on by Foersch, a Dutch physician,
who travelled in Ja v a at the end of the last century. Foersch
wrote that this deadly Upas grew in the midst of a frightful desert.
No bird could rest in its branches, no plant could subsist, no
animal live in its neighbourhood; it blighted everything near with
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