94 Gbe <3att>en 



perhaps lost more than they got by the spoils 

 of the east. 



There may be another reason for the small 

 advance of gardening in those excellent and 

 more temperate climates, where the air and soil 

 were so apt of themselves to produce the best 

 sorts of fruits, without the necessity of culti- 

 vating them by labor and care ; whereas the 

 hotter climates, as well as the cold, are forced 

 upon industry and skill, to produce or im- 

 prove many fruits that grow of themselves in 

 the more temperate regions. However it were, 

 we have very little mention of gardens in old 

 Greece or in old Rome, for pleasure or with 

 elegance, nor of much curiousness or care, to 

 introduce the fruits of foreign climates, con- 

 tenting themselves with those which were 

 native of their own ; and these were the vine, 

 the olive, the fig, the pear, and the apple. 

 Cato, as I remember, mentions no more, and 

 their gardens were then but the necessary part 

 of their farms, intended particularly for the 

 cheap and easy food of their hinds or slaves 

 employed in their agriculture, and so were 

 turned chiefly to all the common sorts of 

 plants, herbs, or legumes (as the French 

 call them) proper for common nourishment ; 

 and the name of hortus is taken to be from 

 ortus, because it perpetually furnishes some 



