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HISTORY OF GARDENING. Part I.

90. The earliest private botanic garden was formed at Padua, by Gaspar de Gabriel, a wealthy Tuscan noble, at considerable expense. It was accomplished in 1525; and though not a public institution, it was open to all the curious.‘To this garden suc- ceeded, that of Corner at Venice, and Simonetta, at Milan; those of some convents at Rome, and of Pinella, at Naples, with others enumerated by botanical historians. (C. Spreng. Hist. lib. iii.; Haller’s Bib. Bot. 21.; Tiraboschi’s Stor. del Litt. Ital.; Gesner, Hort. German.; Stephanus de Re Hortense.)

91. The first public botanic garden established in Europe was that of Pisa, begun, accord- ing to Deleuze, in 1543, by Cosmo de Medici; and of which Ghini, and Cesalpin, cele- brated botanists, were successively the directors. Belon, a French naturalist, w ho was at Pisa in 1555, was astonished at the beauty of the garden, the quantity of plants it con- tained, and the care taken to make them prosper. In 1591 the numl of new plants was found so far accumulated as to render a larger garden necessary, and that space of of h ground was fixed on which is the present botanic garden; two borders were destined for Moc&* ornamental flowers, and a green-house was formed for such as were too tender for the

.. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, a great accession was obtained to pans the garden by the double flowers of Holland, then introduced in Italy for the first time. wa be Po (Calvio, Hist. Pisani.) The example of Pisa was soon imitated by other cities and univer- dare{7008 sities in Italy and Germany. In 1545,(not 1533, as stated by Adamson—sce Deleure,)| ants, the public botanic garden of Padua was agreed on by the senate of Venice. It contained 26 in 1581 four hundred plants cultivated in the open air, besides a number kept in pots to be taken into houses or sheds during winter. The garden of Bologna was next estab~ lished by Pope Pius the Vth; then that of Florence by the Grand Duke; and afterwards that of Rome. From that time to the present day, the numbers of botanic gardens have been continually increasing, so that there is now one belonging to almost every principal city in Italy; an exertion the more remarkable, as botanic gardens in that country are proportionably more expensive than in England, from the necessity of conyeying a stream of water to them, and forming a regular system of irrigation.|

92. A taste for flowers and ornamental plants has thus become general in Italy; and at the Lae same time the means of gratification afforded, by the superabundant plants and seeds of at more these gardens being given away, or sold at very moderate prices to the curious. About a a this time also the Dutch made regular exchanges of their bulbous roots for the orange- trees of Genoa and Leghorn; and the double night-smelling jessamine was introduced at Pisa from Spain, and so highly prized as to have a centinel placed over it by the governor.(Evelyn.) The use of flowers, it is probable, was never entirely laid aside in Italy as ornaments to female dress; but in the progress of refinement their application in ath ae Ae this way became more general, and more select sorts were chosen; they became in de- ptt Be' mand, both gathered in bouquets, and with the entire plants in pots; they were used as mug ue, Du household ornaments both internal and external; and the church, thinking that what pleased man must be pleasing to the gods; or conforming to the taste of the times, and desirous of rendering religion as attractive as possible to the multitude, introduced flowers as decorations of altars and statues, and more especially in their fétes and processions. Pots and boxes of orange trees, pomegranates, bays, oleanders, myrtles, and other plants, are now let out by the day, for decorating the steps and approaches to altars, or sold for ornamenting roofs, balconies, virandas, courts, yards, passages, halls, staircases, and even shops and warehouses in most of the large towns of Italy. Notwithstanding this there is a recent instance on record of a lady residing in Rome, commencing a law-suit against her neighbour, for filling her court-yard with orange-trees, the smell of the flowers of which was by the other considered as a nuisance.

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For the church the white lily(Lilium candidum) is in great demand, with which the Madona, or Madre di Dio, is decorated as an emblem of her virginity. The typha(7° latifolia) is much used when in seed to put into the hands of statues of Christ, being considered as the reed with which the soldiers handed him a sponge of vinegar. In Poland, where the typha has not been easily procured, we have seen leeks in the flower-stalk used as a substitute. The rose, the stock-gilly-flower, the jessamine,&c. are next in demand, and are used in common with such others as are presented gratis, or offered for sale, as decorations indiscriminately to the crowd of statues and pictures of saints which decorate the churches, to private houses, and as ornaments of female dress.

On occasions of public rejoicing flowers are also much used in Italy. Favorite princes and generals are received into towns and even villages through triumphal arches decorated with flowers, and the ground is also sometimes strewed with them. The lives of Buonaparte, Murat, and Beauharnois, afford many examples. The Emperor of Austria made a tour of Italy in 1819, and though every where disliked, every where walking on a mine ready to explode, he was in many places so received; and at the famous cascade of Marmora, near Terni, a slight arcade, 300 yards in length, was formed to guide the steps of the imperial visitor to the best point of view. It was covered with intersecting wreaths of flowers and foliage, and the sides ornamented with festoons of box, myrtle, and bay. At Milan, a very gay city, flowers are greatly prized, and in the winter season are procured from the peculiarly warm and ever verdant gardens between Genoa and Nervi. A louis-d’or, we were informed, is sometimes paid for a single nesegay. During the carnival the demand is great throughout Italy.

93. Florists’ flowers, especially the bulbous kinds, do not succeed wellin the dry warm climate of Italy. Fine varieties of the hyacinth, tulip, ranunculus, auricula, polyanthus, &e. are soon lost there, and obliged to be renewed from more temperate countries. They excei, however, in the culture of the tuberose, which forms an article of commerce