1 88 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



to erect buildings designed to create for exotic plants 

 an artificial climate. But at the beginning of the 

 fifteenth century orangeries passed from kings' gar- 

 dens to those of the people, chiefly in countries 

 where they were not compelled to heat them by fire, 

 as in Brescia, Romagna, and Tuscany. (See Matioli, 

 who says that in his day the orange was cultivated in 

 Italy, in all the gardens of the interior, where cer- 

 tainly it could not live, unless in orangeries (Diosc. 

 c. 132). We also find in Sprengel's History of Bot- 

 any that in this country there were at that time 

 many botanical gardens where they cultivated 

 exotic plants a circumstance which presupposes 

 the necessity of hot-houses. ) 



About the middle of the seventeenth century this 

 luxury was very general, and we see distinguished 

 by their magnificence and grandeur the orangeries 

 of the Farnese family at Parma ; of the Cardinal 

 Xantes ; Aldobrandini and Pio, at Rome ; of the 

 Elector Palatine at Heidelberg (Oliv. de Ser. , p. 

 633) ; of Louis XIII. in France ; and even at 

 Ghent, in Belgium, that of M. de Hellibusi, who 

 imported plants from Genoa, and carried his estab- 

 lishment to the last degree of magnificence. (See 

 Ferraris, p. 150, where he describes the orangery of 

 M. de Hellibusi at Ghent, and that of Louis XIII. 

 at Paris. The latter has been replaced by that of 

 Versailles, of which the magnificence renders it 

 perhaps the finest monument of this kind to be 

 found in Europe.) 



