34 



ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



Provision for 

 exercise. 



In the early cult of sacred trees and pillars, birds 

 played an important part, and then, as Mr. Arthur 

 Evans has remarked, as occurs to-day among primitive 

 races, the spiritual being in bird form was commonly 



supposed to descend on 

 trees and stones. Peacocks 

 strutted along the alleys, 

 swans sailed over the water, 

 and doves flew about the 

 fountains, each the possible 

 incarnation of a god or god- 

 dess. Song-birds are said 

 to have been less esteemed 

 than those which, like the 

 turtle-dove, had " qualities recalling the great law of 

 Nature, the law of love, a fundamental principle 

 in the religion of antiquity." Sometimes they were 

 confined in cages of hempen netting or wickerwork, 

 but often they were permitted to roam at liberty. 

 Beehives were also constructed of wickerwork and 

 sometimes of earthenware. 



In the scheme of the gardens, much importance 

 was attached to various open-air constructions es- 

 pecially intended to promote muscular exercise. The 

 largest of these was the hippodromus, a name given 

 in the time of the Antonines, not to a building, but 

 to an elongated rectangle terminated at one end by 



