EMPIRE’S FLOWER-GARDEN

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 310, 24 September 1921, Page 3

EMPIRE’S FLOWER-GARDEN

ROMANTIC HISTORY OK SCILLY ISLANDS. Tho Scilly Islands, which «have been called the flower garden of the British Empire, have become th.) possession of the Princo of Wales, who tho other day celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday. Much romance is associated with the history of these islands. Though the theory that they are the Cassiterides or “Tin Islands,” of Herodotus, has been abandoned, they might well have been the trading centre where the Phoenicians met the early Britons and bartered for tin from the mines of Cornwall. At any rate they were inhabited .in l pre-historic times, for the inhabitants have left numerous burrows and kistvaens, or sepulchral chambers of stone to tell of their existence on the islands. The Scilliee are generally accorded to be the legendary country of Lyomsse, tho scene of many incidents which figure in tho Arthurian romances and the Cornish folklore, as well as the land of the fervid and tragic Tristan and Iseult. Athelstan made a vow before th© shrino of St. Burien that he would go to the islands •and conquer them, and upon them the scene of Sir Walter Beeaht’s novel, “Amorel oF Lyonnesse,” is laid. There is an account in the early English chronicle describing the flourishing state of Lyonesse and how it suddenly subsided beneath the sea. As a matter of geological knowledge, the islands are, merely the ragged summits of the samh granite ridge that forms the backbone of Cornwall. On© old family bears on its coat-of-arms a horse escaping from tne sea, commemorating the fleetnees of thh charger, which saved one of the ancestors from being swallowed up by the waves when this part of the coast sank. To-day the Sclllies have some of the finest gardens in England. They furnish the London market with early vegetables, but ever more important than these products are the flowers grown on the islands'. The air is .warm and laden with moisture, and from December to June most of the inhabitants are. occupied in picking, packing, and sending away the flowers. Great fields of narcissi are grown, t\e fuchsias, geraniums, and myrtles are said to become immense In site, and roses bloom in mid-winter. Even'the hedges are made of flowering plants. Fishing, the occupation of the early inhabitants, still remains an important one, however, for lobsters must be furnished tho London epicure. Only five of the islands are inhabited—St. Mary’s, Trcsco, St. Martin’s, St. Agnes, and Bfyher—and Hugh Town, on St. Mary’s, is the capital. Abovo this city towers Star Castle of Elizabethan days. Until the acquisition of tho island by the Prince of Wales they have been governed by lord proprietor, since the time of Elizabeth.