62 



Art. V. On the Employment of Common Salt for the 

 Purposes of Horticulture. By Samuel Parkes, F.L.S., 

 S;c. 



[This Essay, extracted from the Horticultural Memoirs" of Edinburgh, was 

 rewarded by the Prize Medal of the Caledonian Horticultural Society 

 for 1819.] 



As a science, Horticulture is comparatively but of a modern 

 date. It was unknown both in Greece and in ancient Rome ; 

 for in all the accounts which we have of the baths, the 

 grottos, and the aqueducts, which were considered so orna- 

 mental to their cities, there is, I believe, nothing described 

 which conveys any idea whatever of our modern gardens. The 

 Britons, like the Romans and the ancient Germans, made use 

 of herbs and fruits ; but, according to Strabo, they were such as 

 grew in the fields and woods, without cultivation. Indeed it 

 has often been questioned, whether the hanging-gardens of 

 Babylon, of which so much has been said, were not more for the 

 display of an original kind of architecture, or for the ostentatious 

 exhibition of ornamental and expensive sculptures, and enor- 

 mous idols of gold and silver, than for any purposes of real 

 utility. 



Even in the Augustan age, when the wines of Italy were in 

 general estimation, little was known of the true method of culti- 

 vating the vine, as appears from a story which is recorded by 

 Pliny. He relates that a celebrated grammarian, who lived in 

 the reign of Tiberius*, bought a vineyard, which had been so much 

 neglected by its former owner, that it had become almost barren ; 

 and that when, by care and attention, he had rendered it fruit- 

 ful, his neighbours, who had no idea that trees could be so im- 



* In a century or two after this period, it is probable that the Romans 

 had acquired more knowledge of the management of vineyards ; for we 

 read that, about A. D. 278, the settlers in Britain, finding that some 

 parts of the island were not unfit for vineyards, obtained permission from 

 the Emperor Probus to plant vhies here, and make wine from their 

 produce. 



