Boox I. GARDENS OF THE ROMANS. 9

32, It is said that the browsing of a goat gave the first idea of pruning the vine, as chance, which had set fire to a rose-tree, according to Acosta(Histoire Nat. des Indes), gave the first idea of pruning the rose. Theophrastus informs us that fire was applied to the rose-trees in Greece to enrich them, and that without that precaution they would bear no flowers. r;

33. The origin of the art of grafting has been very unsatisfactorily accounted for by Pliny and Lucretius. The crossing, rubbing, and subsequent growing together of two branches of a crowded tree or thicket, are more likely to have originated the idea; but when this was first noticed, and how grafting came to be used for the amelioration of fruits, will probably ever remain a secret. Macrobius, a Roman author of the fifth century, according to the taste of his time, says, Saturn taught the art to the inhabitants of Latium. It does not appear to have been known to the Persians, or the Greeks, in the time of Homer, or Hesiod; nor, according to Chardin, is it known to the Persians at this day. Grafting was not known in China till very lately; it was shown to a few gardeners by the Missionaries, as it was to the natives of Peru and South America, by the Spaniards. Some, however, infer from a passage in Manlius, that it may have been mentioned in some of Hesiod’s writings, which are lost.‘

34. The culture of fruits and culinary plants must have been preceded by a considerable degree of civilisation. Moses gave some useful directions to his people on the culture of the vine and olive. For the first three years, they are not to be allowed to ripen any fruit; the produce of the fourth year is for the Lord or his priests; and it is not till the fifth year that it may be eaten by the planter. This must have contributed materially to their strength and establishment in the soil. The fruit-trees in the gardens of Alcinous were planted in quincunx; there were hedges for shelter and security, and the pot-herbs and flowers were planted in beds; the whole so contrived as to be irrigated. Melons in Persia were manured with pigeon’s dung, as they are to this day in that country. After being sown, the melon tribe produce a bulk of food sooner than any other plant; hence the value of this plant in seasons of scarcity, and the high price of doves’ dung during the famine in Samaria(2 Kings, vi. 25.), when a cab, not quite three pints of corn mea- sure, cost five pieces of silver.

EE

Cuar. II.

Chronological History of Gardening, from the time of the Roman Kings, in the sixth century B. C., to the Decline and Fall of the Empire in the fifth century of our era.

35. Gardening among the Romans we shall consider, 1. As an art of design or taste: 2. In respect to the culture of flowers and plants of ornament: 3. As to its products for the kitchen and the dessert: 4. As to the propagation of timber-trees and hedges: and 5. As ascience, and as to the authors it has produced. In general it will be found that the Romans copied their gardening from the Greeks, as the latter did from the Persians, and that gardening like every other art extended with civilisation from east to west.

Secr. I. Roman Gardening as an Art of Design and Taste.

36. The first mention of a garden in the Roman History is that of Tarquinius Super- bus, B. C. 534, by Livy and Dionysius Halicarnassus. From what they state, it can only be gathered that it was adjoining to the royal palace, and: abounded with flowers, chiefly roses and poppies. The next in the order of time are those of Lucullus, situated near Baiz, in the bay of Naples. They were of a magnificence and expense rivalling that of the eastern monarchs; and procured to this general, the epithet of the Roman Xerxes. They consisted of vast edifices projecting into the sea; of immense artificial elevations; of plains formed where mountains formerly stood; and of vast pieces of water, which it was the fashion of that time to dignify with the pompous titles of Nilus and Euripus. Wucullus had made several expeditions to the eastern part of Asia, and It Is probable, he had there contracted a taste for this sort of magnificence. Varro ridicules these works for their amazing sumptuosity; and Cicero makes his friend Atticus hold cheap those magnificent waters, in comparison with the natural stream of the river Fibrenus, where a small island accidentally divided it.(De Legibus, lib. ii.) Lucullus, however, had the merit of introducing the cherry, the peach,‘and the apricot from the Kast, a benefit which still remains to mankind.(Plutarch in vita Luculli; Sallust; and Varro de Re Rustica.)

37. OF the gardens of the Augustan age of Virgil and Horace, generally thought to be that in which taste and elegance were eminently conspicuous, we know but little. Ina garden described by the former poet in his Georgies(lib. iv. 121.), he places only