Norman Douglas:
"Apropos of Japan – readers of Madame Chrysanthème will recall a passage describing how that identical region of the body was ingeniously utilized in the tattooing of a foxhunt.
"Dahlias are not indigenous to Australia, but to Mexico and Central America. The young man, therefore, cannot have set out to portray a flower which was unfamiliar to him; he probably attempted a local plant (his artistic effort is said to have been 'like a dahlia'), and it was doubtless a spectator, some prying Englishman, who thought to detect a resemblance between a dahlia and the tattooed surface. My botanical expert writes: 'Dahlias are first mentioned by Hernandez in his History of Mexico, 1651; later on by the Frenchman Ménonville, who went out there to steal the red cochineal insect from the Spaniards. Named for Andrew Dahl, Swedish botanist, and introduced into England by the Marchioness of Bute; afterwards by Lady Holland to Holland House. All dahlias, including the variety cocksinia, are scentless."
(Ed.note: There was a young girl of Australia,
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