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Book I. GARDENING IN HOLLAND. 3]

Sussecr. 3. Dutch Gardening in respect to the Culture of Fruits and Culinary Vegetables.

146. The Dutch and Flemings are eminent as fruit-gardeners, but, as Harte observes, they are better operators than writers, and having at the same time a good deal of the spirit of gens de mélier, we bave almost nothing to offer in the way of historical inform- ation.‘Lhose gardens, which Gesner and Stephanus inform us were so richly stocked with flowers early in the sixteenth century, would, no doubt, be equally so with fruits and legumes. One of the earliest books on the horticulture of the Low Countries, is that of Van Osten, published about the end of the seventeenth century. They appear at that time to have had all the fruits, now in common cultivation, in considerable variety, which Miller informs us was introduced about that time by Le Cour, of Leyden, from the West Indies, although not mentioned by Van Osten or Cem- melin. It is generally said, that about thesame period all the courts in Europe were supplied with early fruits from Holland. Bénard admits(quoted in Repertory of Arts, 1802,) that this was the case with the court of France, so late as the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. Miller informs us that Le Cour paid great attention to gardening, and especially to the culture of wall-fruits, and that he tried the effects of different kinds of walls and modes of training. Speechly, early in the eighteenth century, made a tour in that country, chiefly to observe the Dutch mode of cultivating the pine and the grape; they forced, he informs us(T'r. on the Vine), chiefly in pits and low houses, and produced ripe grapes of the sweet-water kind in March and April. The Low Countries are celebrated for good varieties of the apple and pear.‘The supplies of these articles sent to the markets of Brussels, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, are equal, if not beyond any thing of the kind to be met with elsewhere in Europe.‘The climate of Flanders suits these fruits; that of Holland is rather adverse to flavor, from its moisture; but peaches, pines, and melons attain a larger size than in France. Tournay is so much celebrated for its pears, that the Ghent Society, in 1816, offered a prize for‘ the best explanation of the causes of the superiority in size, beauty, and flavor, of the pears grown at Tournay.””(Hort. Tour, 333.) Forcing in pits and frames, is carried to great perfection in Holland, and melons and pines are, at the present time, sent to the London and Paris markets, and sold for very moderate prices.

147. The culinary vegetables of Holland are brought to great perfection. All the plants of culture, and especially the cabbage tribe, turnip, onion, carrot,&c. are grown to a large size, and very succulent. Of plants edible in their natural state, as the parsley and other herbs, and the fungi, they have excellent varieties. For leguminous crops the climate is sometimes too moist. Brussels is noted for the greens or sprouts, which bear the name of that town; and Van Mons informs us(Hort. Trans. ili. 197.) that they are mentioned in the market regulations of that city so early as 1213. The Caledonian Tourists, in 1817, found the markets of Ghent and Amsterdam better supplied with culinary vegetables than any in Holland.‘The cauliflower was excellent.‘Vhe Dutch also excel in asparagus, carrots, and purslane.

148.° Forcing-houses have been long in use in Holland, but the date of their introduc- tion we have not been able to learn. It is singular that they are not once mentioned in the early editions of Van Osten, published from 1689 to 1750; but Adanson(J amulles des Plantes, Preface,) writing about the latter period, speaks of the hot-houses of the Dutch in terms which evidently refer to forcing-houses. Orangeries, and betanic houses, we have seen,(133.) were in use so early as 1599. Within the last twenty years the demand for forced productions has greatly diminished in Holland. Summer, or what are called main crops, are now chiefly attempted, both in public and private gardens; but after the annexation of Holland to France, and since its subsequent union with Flanders, the spirit for enjoyments of even this sort, has declined with the means of procuring them.

excepting the pine-apple,

Sunszcr. 4. Dutch Gardening, in respect to the planting of Timber-trees and Hedges. 149. Planting is not very general in Holland. In a country so thickly peopled, and so conveniently situated in respect to marine commerce, it is not likely that much

ground would be devoted to merely useful plantations. In the more inland parts of

Flanders, there are natural forests and extensive copses; these have been, and continue to be kept up, and in some cases increased in extent by planting land too poor for culti- vation. In Radcliff’s Agricultural Survey of that country, some account will be found of their management. We observed, in 1819, some belts and clumps forming, in the ‘nglish manner, on some waste lands near Cambray, and that the Duke of Wellington was planting on his estate at Waterloo. Between Aranagoen and Rhenen, a tract of land, several miles in extent, and no better in quality than Bagshot-heath, is planted with Scotch firs, Weymouth pines, beech, and birch; and many hundred acres adjoining have been sown with acorns for copse, and enclosed with thorn hedges.

150. Avenues, hedge-rows, and oxier-holts, are the principal plantations of the Dutch. In these they excel, and the country in consequence resembles a series of gardens.