CULTIVATED PLANTS. 179 



(commonly called in this country Salishuria adiantifolia), are 

 not unfrequently to be met with in Southern Europe ; and the 

 Camellia, first cultivated in Italy in the Caserta garden, near 

 Naples, in 1760, is now a great favourite in Tuscany, where, in 

 sheltered situations, it vrill attain great size and beauty in the 

 open air. 



The common Roses of Italian gardens are none of them 

 indigenous, but the native country and precise form of the wild 

 type of most of them is involved in much uncertainty. The most 

 anciefitly and generally cultivated one, the common Cabbage Rose 

 (Rosa centifolia), is that which is the most generally alluded to by 

 poets and other writers, from the days of Virgil and Pliny, to 

 our own times. It is also much cultivated in Southern Europe 

 for the use of perfumers. It is said to have been brought from 

 Persia into Greece and Italy in very remote times. The Provence 

 Rose (Rosa gallica) is found wild in France and Germany, but 

 whether indigenous or not, is uncertain. It is believed to have 

 been referred to by Pliny, under the names of Rosa j^f'^i^^stina, 

 carthaginensis, and milesia. The Damask Rose (R. damasceua), 

 and the common White Rose (R. alba), are also believed to have 

 been among those enumerated by Pliny, and to be natives of 

 Southern Europe, though not of Italy. The Rosa moschata 

 appears to have been introduced from the Levant in the sixteenth 

 century. The climbing roses now forming so beautiful a feature 

 in Italian promenades and gardens (Rosa indica, R. Banksiana, 

 and R. multiflora), are of very recent importation from French 

 and English gardens, as none of them appear to have been known 

 in Italy before the commencement of the present century. 



From the latter end of the sixteenth century, there arose in 

 various parts of Italy, especially at Florence, a great rage for the 

 cultivation of innumerable varieties of Anemones (A. coronaria), 

 Ranunculus (R. asiaticus), Hyacinths (H. orientalis). Tulips (T. 

 Gesneriana), and Narcissus (N. poeticus). The wild types of 

 most of them, perhaps of all except the ranunculus, are to be 

 found in Italy and Greece as well as in the Levant, but the 

 production and cultivation of the garden varieties of all of them 

 commenced in the East. They were all introduced into Western 

 Europe from Constantinople at various periods between the years 

 1550 and 1600, together with the Crotni Imperial (Fritillaria 

 imperialis), said to be a native of Persia, the Muscari moschatum 

 from the shores of the Bosphorus, the Liliinn chalceclonicum from 

 the Levant, which had all been then for some time in Constanti- 



N 2 



