The British portion of this community allow their exile to be much more dull and dreary than it need be, by neglecting to cultivate their gardens, and leaving them entirely to the taste and industry of the malee.  I never feel half so much inclined to envy the great men of this now crowded city the possession of vast but gardenless mansions, (partly blocked up by those of their neighbours,) as I do to felicitate the owner of some humbler but more airy and wholesome dwelling in the suburbs, when the well-sized grounds attached to it have been touched into beauty by the tasteful hand of a lover of flowers.

But generally speaking my countrymen in most parts of India allow their grounds to remain in a state which I cannot help characterizing as disreputable.  It is amazing how men or women accustomed to English modes of life can reconcile themselves to that air of neglect, disorder, and discomfort which most of their “compounds” here exhibit.

It would afford me peculiar gratification to find this book read with interest by my Hindu friends, (for whom, chiefly, it has been written,) and to hear that it has induced some of them to pay more attention to the ornamental cultivation of their grounds; for it would be difficult to confer upon them a greater blessing than a taste for the innocent and elegant pleasures of the FLOWER-GARDEN.

SUPPLEMENT.

SACRED TREES AND SHRUBS OF THE HINDUS.

The following list of the trees and shrubs held sacred by the Hindus is from the friend who furnished me with the list of Flowers used in Hindu ceremonies.[130] It was received too late to enable me to include it in the body of the volume.

AMALAKI (Phyllanthus emblica).—­A tree held sacred to Shiva.  It has no flowers, and its leaves are in consequence used in worshipping that deity as well as Durga, Kali, and others.  The natives of Bengal do not look upon it with any degree of religious veneration, but those of the Upper Provinces annually worship it on the day of the Shiva Ratri, which generally falls in the latter end of February or the beginning of March, and on which all the public offices are closed.

ASWATH-THA (Ficus Religiosa).—­It is commonly called by Europeans the Peepul tree, by which name, it is known to the natives of the Upper Provinces.  The Bhagavat Gita says that Krishna in giving an account of his power and glory to Arjuna, before the commencement of the celebrated battle between the Kauravas and Pandavas at Kurukshetra, identified himself with the Aswath-tha whence the natives consider it to be a sacred tree.[131]