as compared with the Present. 147 



out the vineyard unto keepers ; every one, for the fruit there- 

 of, was to bring a thousand pieces of silver. Let us get up 

 early to the vineyards ; let us see if the vine flourish, wheth- 

 er the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth. 

 The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner 

 of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, 

 O my beloved." 



If it were desired to magnify this subject, the object would 

 be sufiiciently attained by referring to the Mosaic account of 

 the creation of the world. " And the Lord God planted a gar- 

 den eastward in Eden ; and there he put the man whom he 

 had formed." 



That much of the skill, and many of the most approved 

 appliances of the gardener's art have come down to him from 

 a very remote antiquity is true beyond dispute. St. Paul 

 seizes upon a figure, derived from this source, to enforce a 

 sublime doctrine. '•' And if some of the branches be broken off, 

 and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffedin among them, 

 and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive 

 tree, boast not against the branches : but, if thou boast, thou 

 bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, 

 The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. 

 Well : because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou 

 standest by faith," &c. 



To the Antients, then, are we indebted for the knowledge 

 we possess of the art of grafting. This great fact must not 

 be forgotten. And we have also derived from them our knowl- 

 edge of the operation of budding, sister to the former. This 

 demands from us redoubled acknowledgments. The precise 

 period of the invention of these arts, like many of the most 

 common and useful of our tools and implements of labor, is 

 lost in remote antiquity. To go no further back than Virgil, 

 we find him describing, in graceful hexameters, and not with- 

 out hyperbole, the modes and the effects both of grafting and 

 budding. Of grafting, he says : — 



" Et saepe alterius ramos impune videmus 

 Vertere in alterius, mutatamque insita mala 

 Ferre pyrum, et prunis lapidosa rubescere coma. 

 Quare agite, 6 proprios generatim discite cultus, 

 Agricolae, fructusque feros molite colendo. 



