SCOTTISH GARDENS 



probably that rampart erected by Lollius Urbicus 

 for the Emperor Antoninus Pius about A.D. 140. 

 It stretched between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, 

 and connected the detached forts built by Julius 

 Agricola seventy years before; but the reference 

 may have been to the earlier wall, that great 

 fortification drawn by the Emperor Hadrian from 

 the Tyne to the Solway, roughly parallel with the 

 line dividing England from Scotland at the present 

 day. 



Whichever barrier Procopius had in mind, 

 whether it was the whole of modern Scotland, or 

 only the Highlands, that he included in his un- 

 complimentary estimate of the climate, the fifteen 

 centuries which have run their course or nearly so, 

 since he laid down his pen have not served wholly 

 to efface the unfavourable estimate of Scottish 

 seasons entertained by many travelled, and all 

 untravelled, southerners. "As in the Northerne 

 parts of England," wrote Fynes Moryson in the 

 seventeenth century, "they have small pleasantnes, 

 goodnesse, or abundance of Fruites and Flowers, so 

 in Scotland they must have lesse, or none at all/' 



It was Dr. Johnson, if I mistake not, and if 

 not he, then some other equally veracious tourist, 

 who declared that Scots farmers could only grow 

 barley under glass; and really this assertion is not 

 one whit further from the truth than many of 

 the statements one may see gravely repeated in 

 gardening journals. Advice is frequently based, 



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