possibility of discovering them by the configurations of the superior bodies.” And, having thereupon “made some essays,” he “found encouragement to proceed further, and ultimately framed to himself that method which he ever afterwards followed.” He then began to issue his prophetical almanacs and other works, which met with serious attention from some of the most prominent members of the Long Parliament. If we may believe himself, Lilly lived on friendly and almost intimate terms with Bulstrode Whitlock, Lenthall the speaker, Sir Philip Stapleton, Elias Ashmole and others. Even Selden seems to have given him some countenance, and probably the chief difference between him and the mass of the community at the time was that, while others believed in the general truth of astrology, he ventured to specify the future events to which its calculations pointed. Even from his own account of himself, however, it is evident that he did not trust implicitly to the indications given by the aspects of the heavens, but like more vulgar fortune-tellers kept his eyes and ears open for any information which might make his predictions safe. It appears that he had correspondents both at home and in foreign parts to keep him conversant with the probable current of affairs. Not a few of his exploits indicate rather the quality of a clever police detective than of a profound astrologer. After the Restoration he very quickly fell into disrepute. His sympathy with the parliament, which his predictions had generally shown, was not calculated to bring him into royal favour. He came under the lash of Butler, who, making allowance for some satiric exaggeration, has given in the character of Sidrophel a probably not very incorrect picture of the man; and, having by this time amassed a tolerable fortune, he bought a small estate at Hersham in Surrey, to which he retired, and where he diverted the exercise of his peculiar talents to the practice of medicine. He died in 1681.
Lilly’s life of himself, published after his death, is still worth looking into as a remarkable record of credulity. So lately as 1852 a prominent London publisher put forth a new edition of Lilly’s Introduction to Astrology, “with numerous emendations adapted to the improved state of the science.”
LILOAN, a town of the province of Cebú, Philippine Islands,
on the E. coast, 10 m. N.E. of Cebú, the capital of the province.
Pop. (1903), after the annexation of Compostela, 15,626. There
are seventeen villages or barrios in the town, and eight of them
had in 1903 a population exceeding 1000. The language is
Visayan. Fishing is the principal industry. Liloan has one of
the principal coal beds on the island; and rice, Indian corn,
sugar-cane and coffee are cultivated. Coconuts and other
tropical fruits are important products.
LILY, Lilium, the typical genus of the botanical order
Liliaceae, embracing nearly eighty species, all confined to the
northern hemisphere, and widely distributed throughout the
north temperate zone. The earliest in cultivation were described
in 1597 by Gerard (Herball, p. 146), who figures eight kinds of
true lilies, which include L. album (L. candidum) and a variety,
bizantinum, two umbellate forms of the type L. bulbiferum,
named L. aureum and L. cruentum latifolium, and three with
pendulous flowers, apparently forms of the martagon lily.
Parkinson, in his Paradisus (1629), described five varieties of
martagon, six of umbellate kinds—two white ones, and L.
pomponium, L. chalcedonicum, L. carniolicum and L. pyrenaicum—together
with one American, L. canadense, which had been
introduced in 1629. For the ancient and medieval history of
the lily, see M. de Cannart d’Hamale’s Monographie historique
et littéraire des lis (Malines, 1870). Since that period many
new species have been added. The latest authorities for description
and classification of the genus are J. G. Baker (“Revision of the
Genera and Species of Tulipeae,” Journ. of Linn. Soc. xiv. p.
211, 1874), and J. H. Elwes (Monograph of the Genus Lilium,
1880), who first tested all the species under cultivation, and has
published every one beautifully figured by W. H. Fitch, and
some hybrids. With respect to the production of hybrids, the
genus is remarkable for its power of resisting the influence of
foreign pollen, for the seedlings of any species, when crossed,
generally resemble that which bears them. A good account
of the new species and principal varieties discovered since 1880,
with much information on the cultivation of lilies and the
diseases to which they are subject, will be found in the report
of the Conference on Lilies, in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural
Society, 1901. The new species include a number discovered
in central and western China by Dr Augustine Henry
and other collectors; also several from Japan and California.
The structure of the flower represents the simple type of monocotyledons, consisting of two whorls of petals, of three free parts each, six free stamens, and a consolidated pistil of three carpels, ripening into a three-valved capsule containing many winged seeds. In form, the flower assumes three types: trumpet-shaped, with a more or less elongated tube, e.g. L. longiflorum and L. candidum; an open form with spreading perianth leaves, e.g. L. auratum; or assuming a pendulous habit, with the tips strongly reflexed, e.g. the martagon type. All have scaly bulbs, which in three west American species, as L. Humboldti, are remarkable for being somewhat intermediate between a bulb and a creeping rhizome. L. bulbiferum and its allies produce aerial reproductive bulbils in the axils of the leaves. The bulbs of several species are eaten, such as of L. avenaceum in Kamchatka, of L. Martagon by the Cossacks, and of L. tigrinum, the “tiger lily,” in China and Japan. Medicinal uses were ascribed to the species, but none appear to have any marked properties in this respect.
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| Madonna or White Lily (Lilium candidum). About 14 nat. size. |
The white lily, L. candidum, the λείριον of the Greeks, was one of the commonest garden flowers of antiquity, appearing in the poets from Homer downwards side by side with the rose and the violet. According to Hehn, roses and lilies entered Greece from the east by way of Phrygia, Thrace and Macedonia (Kulturpflanzen und Hausthiere, 3rd ed., p. 217). The word λείριον itself, from which lilium is derived by assimilation of consonants, appears to be Eranian (Ibid. p. 527), and according to ancient etymologists (Lagarde, Ges. Abh. p. 227) the town of Susa was connected with the Persian name of the lily sûsan (Gr. σοῦσον, Heb. shôshan). Mythologically the white lily, Rosa Junonis, was fabled to have sprung from the milk of Hera. As the plant of purity it was contrasted with the rose of Aphrodite. The word κρίνον, on the other hand, included red and purple lilies, Plin. H.N. xxi. 5 (11, 12), the red lily being best known in Syria and Judaea (Phaselis). This perhaps is the “red lily of Constantinople” of Gerard, L. chalcedonicum. The lily of the Old Testament (shôshan) may be conjectured to be a red lily from the simile in Cant. v. 13, unless the allusion is to the fragrance rather than the colour of the lips, in which case the white lily must be thought of. The “lilies of the field,” Matt. vi. 28, are κρίνα, and the comparison of their beauty with royal robes suggests their identification with the red Syrian lily of Pliny. Lilies, however, are not a conspicuous feature in the flora of Palestine, and the red anemone (Anemone coronaria), with which all the hill-sides of Galilee are dotted in the spring, is perhaps more likely to have suggested the figure. For the lily in the pharmacopoeia of the ancients see Adams’s Paul. Aegineta, iii. 196. It was used in unguents and against the bites of snakes, &c. In the middle ages the flower continued to be common and was taken as the symbol of heavenly purity. The three golden lilies of France are said to have been originally three lance-heads.
Lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis, belongs to a different tribe (Asparagoideae) of the same order. It grows wild in woods in some parts of England, and in Europe, northern Asia and the Alleghany Mountains of North America. The leaves and flower-scapes spring from an underground creeping stem. The small pendulous bell-shaped flowers contain no honey but are visited by bees for the pollen.
The word “lily” is loosely used in connexion with many plants which are not really liliums at all, but belong to genera which are
