Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1892 — The Tulip Mania. [ARTICLE]

The Tulip Mania.

The tulip was first made known to botanists by descriptions and figures made by the Swiss naturalist, Conrad Gessner, in the year 1559. The plant from which Gessner made his drawings was growing in the garden of one John Henry Harwart, at Augsburg, the seed or bulb having originally been brought from the Levant. The date of its introduction into England is somewhat uncertain, but horticulturists usually set it down as 1580, probably on account of a passage in the works of Hakluyt (1582), which says: “Now within these four years there has been brought into England from Vienna, Austria, divers kinds of flowers called Tulipas.” Linnteus tells us that the tulip is a native of Cappadocia, also that he believed it to be the “Lily of the Field” spoken of by the Savior. A curious and sensational chapter in the tulip’s history is, however, what I started out with the intention of writing, and which must yet be given, even at the risk of tiring everybody except the true tulip maniac. Soon after its introduction into Western Europe, boards of trade (providing they had such things in those days), made tulip bulbs a basis of the wildest financial schemes ever known, engendering a speculative fever which went down into history as the “tulip mania” or “tulip craze.” The staid Hollanders allowed their “ little diKe-locked land” to become the center of this curious specieti of speculative frenzy, and for three years—--1044-47—the recklessness of the dealers and the disastrous results of the “mania” can only be compared with the “South Sea Bubble. ” When the craze was at its height some of the bulbs sold for ten, twenty, and even 103 or 500 times theii weight in gold. A single bulb of the Semper Augustus, “ not much exceeding the bigness of an onion sette,” was sold on the market for 2,000 florins. But this was not all. The gentleman who purchased it did so with the mistaken idea that it was the only known bulb of the kind in existence, but no sooner did he register purchase than another, ‘ ‘ large) somewhat but not big,” was announced, and the poor victim was compelled to paj 4,000 florins for it or see it go to another. This he did, and became the owner ol two of the highest priced botanical specimens ever purchased.—[St. Louis Ro public.