8 HISTORY OF GARDENING. Parr C.

Aristotle’s materia medica was chiefly plants. Solomon wrote on botany as a philosopher, and appears to have cultivated a general collection, independently of his plants of ornament.

30. Flowers, as decorations, must have been very soon used on account of their brilliant colors and smell. The Greeks, Theophrastus informs us,(Hist. Plant. lib. vi. c. 5.) cultivated roses, gilly-flowers, violets, narcissi, and the iris; and we read in Aristophanes(Acharn. v. 212.), that a market for flowers was held at Athens, where the baskets were very quickly disposed of. From the writings of other authors, we learn that a con- tinual use was made of flowers throughout all Greece. Not only were they then, as now, the ornament of beauty, and of the altars of the gods, but youth crowned themselves with them in the fétes: priests in religious ceremonies; and guests in convivial meetings. Garlands of flowers were suspended from the gates in times of rejoicing; and, what is. still more remarkable, and more remote from our manners, the philosophers them- selves wore crowns of flowers, and the warriors ornamented their foreheads with them in days of triumph. These customs existed in every part of the East. There were at Athens, as after- wards at Rome, florists, whose business it was to weave crowns(coronaria) and wreaths of flowers. Some of these crowns and garlands were of one species of flower; others of different species; or of branches of peculiar plants, relating to some symbolical or mythological idea. Hence the term, Coronarie, was applied to such plants as were consecrated to those uses, and of which some were cultivated, and others gathered in the fields; but the name was applied to all such as were distinguished by the beauty or fragrance of their flowers. (Curt. Spreng. Hist. R. Herb. lib. i.& li.; Paschalis de Coronis, lib. x.; Sabina by Bettinger, in N. Mon. Mag. Jan. and. Feb. 1819.; Theophrastus by Stackhouse,&c.)

31. The first implement used in cultivating the soil, all antiquarians agree, must have been of the pick kind. A medal of the greatest antiquity, dug up in the island of Syracuse, contained the impression of such an implement(fig. 2.a). Some of the oldest Egyptian

hieroglyphics have similar representationgy(5); and Eckeberg has figured what may be considered as the primitive spade of China(c). In the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury, when Peru was discovered by the Spaniards, the gardeners of that country had no other spade than a pointed stick, of which the more industrious made use of two at a time. (¢) The Chinese implement bears the highest marks of civilisation, since it has a hilt or cross handle, and a tread for the foot; and consequently supposes the use of shoes or sandals by the operator, and an erect position of his body. The Roman spade(Zigo)

those of Italy(zappa), and of France(béche), are either flattened or two-clawed picks, which are worked entirely by the arms, and keep the operator constantly bent almost to the ground; or long-handled wooden spatulz also worked solely by the arms, but with the body in a more erect position. Both kinds equally suppose a_bare-footed operator,

like the Grecian and I ruvian gardeners, and those of France and Italy at the present day.

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