CHAPTER I. 



HISTOBICAIi SKETCH OF GARDENING. 



1. Gardening, as an industrial art, existed in veiy remote antiquity. 

 Kot to speak of the fabled gardens of Hesperides and of Alcinous, eacb 



of them — 



** Four acres the allotted space of ground, 

 Fenced with a green inclosure all around ;** 



or the hanging gardens of Babylon, by which the Babylonian monarch 

 sought to reconcile his Median queen to the flat and naked country of 

 her adoption, and banish from her memory the regretted Median hilla 

 and forests, we find among the Eomans not only traces of extensive 

 garden cultivation, but a garden literature, which has probably not 

 a little influenced our own. The kings of Eome seem, indeed, to 

 have been their own gardeners ; for PHny tells us that Tarquin the 

 Superb sent a certain cruel and sanguinary inessage from the garden 

 which he was then cultivating with his own hands, to his son ; and he 

 adds, " At the present day," that is, about the year 80 or 90 of the 

 Christian era, " under the general name of Hortorum, we have pleasure- 

 grounds situated in the very heart of the city, as well as extensive fields 

 and villas. The garden constitutes the poor man's field," he proceeds 

 to say, — "from it the lower classes procure theii- daily food;" and after 

 a sneer at the disciple of Epicurus, who risks the peril of shipwreck in 

 Beeking for oysters in the abysses of the deep, or who searches for birds 



