) “ARY, i. ee GARDENS OF ANTIQUITY.: {ncie c< | Se 24, The vale of Tempé, however, as described in the third book of /Elian’s vari- o).: 2> z 3 Sie ous history, and the public gardens of Athens according to Plutarch, prove that their phi- So? losophers and great men were alive to the beauties of verdant scenery.‘The academus

| Preg A 5 es i i am or public garden of Athens, Plutarch informs us, was originally a rough uncultivated : spot, till planted by the general Cimon, who conveyed streams of water to it, and laid it

oe out in shady groves, with gymnasia, or places of exercise, ae philosophic walks. eee Among the trees were the olive, plane, and elm; and as two last sorts had attained to res is such extraordinary size, that at the siege of Athens by Sylla, in the war with Mithridates, onian they were selected to be cut down, to supply warlike engines. In the account of these nate gardens by Pausanias we learn, that they were highly elegant, and decorated with temples, : altars, tombs, statues, monuments, and towers; that among the tombs were those of Pirithous, Theseus, Cidipus, and Adrastes; and at the entrance was the first altar were dedicated to love.“Si cing, 25. The passages of the Greek writers which relate to gardens have been amp y illustrated wthe by the learned German antiquarian Bettinger(Racemazionen zur Gartenkunst der ae Alten); on which it may be remarked, that the qualities chiefly enlarged on are, shade, Ly- coolness, freshness, breezes, fragrance, and repose— effects ot gardening which are felt cing and relished at an earlier period of human civilisation than pices beauty, or other tel poetical and comparatively artificial seen with oe a 5 fos though aan; gardening as a merely useful art may oon priority to every other, ee as an art of wild imagination, it is one of the last pice ie pen Bee fo perfec tion. In fact, its| ae existence as such an art, depends on the previous existence of pastoral poetry and mental cultivation; for what is nature to an uncultivated mind? by Srcr. VII. Gardening in the ages of Antiquity, as to Fruits, Culinary Productions, and er’s Flowers. Ve 26. The first vegetable production which attracted man’s attention as an article of food, ith is supposed‘to have been the fruit of some tree; and the idea of removing sucha tree toa ms spot, and enclosing and cultivating it near his habitation, is thought to be abundantly i natural to man, and to have first given rise to gardens._All the writers of antiquity agree ae in putting the fig at the head of the fruit-trees that were first cultivated. The vine is the Is next in order, the fruit of which serves not only for food, like that of the fig, but also for 2 drink. Noah the Jewish Bacchus, and Osiris the Bacchus of the Egyptians and Greeks, of are alike placed in the very first age of the postdiluvian world. The almond and pome- 5 granate were early cultivated in Canaan(Gen. xliii. 5. 11. and Numb. xx. 5.), and it 'y appears by the complaints of the Israelites in the wilderness, that the fig, grape, pomegra- nate, and melon, were known in Egypt from time immemorial. 7 27. The first herbage made use of by man, would be the most succulent leaves or stalks S which the surface around him afforded; of these every country has some plants which are . succulent even ina wild state, as the chenopodez. Sea cale, and asparagus, were known to ) k the Greeks from the earliest ages, and still abound in Greece, the former on the sandy plains, . and the latter on the sea shores. One of the laws of Solon prohibits women from eating S crambe in child-bed. Of the green seeds of herbage plants, the bean and other legu- ; minosee were evidently the first in use, and it is singular that Pythagoras should have ; forbidden the use of beans to his pupils because they were so much of the nature of flesh;

or, in the language of modern chemistry, because they contained so much vegeto-animal matter.

28. The first roots, or rootlike parts of plants made use of, must have been some of the surface bulbs, as the onion,(Numb. xi. 5.) and the edible crocus(C. aureus, Fl. Grec.) of Syria. Underground bulbs and tubers, as the orchis, potatoe, and earthnut, would be next discovered: and_ramose roots, as those of the lucerne in Persia, and arracacha(Ligus- ticum sp.?) in Mexico, would be eagerly gnawed wherever they could be got at. Bulbs of culture, as the turnip, would be of much later discovery, and must at first have been found only in temperate climates.

29. The use of plants for preternatural, religious, Sfunereal, medical, and scientific pur- poses, like every other use, is of the remotest antiquity. Rachel demanded from her sister the mandrakes(Mandragora officinalis, W.)(fig. 1. from the Flora Greca), whose roots are thought to resemble the human form, which Reuben had brought from the fields; impressed, as she no doubt was, with the idea of the efficacy of that plant against sterility. Bundles of flowers covered the tables of the Greeks, and were worn during repasts, be- cause the plants, of which they consisted, were supposed to possess the virtue of preserving the wearer from the fumes of wine, of refreshing the thinking faculty, preserving the purity of ideas, and the gaiety of the spirits. Altars were strewed with flowers both by Jews and Greeks; they were placed on high places, and under trees, as old clothes are still sacrificed on the trunks of the Platanus in Georgia and Persia. God appeared to Moses in a bush. Jacob was embalmed, in all probability, with aromatic herbs. B 4