ON VEGETABLE GARDENING. 209 



cultural classes. It is natural that these people should 

 provide for their future comfort by conveying with 

 them seeds of various plants, to the cultivation and use 

 of which they have been accustomed in their native 

 land. Accordingly we find, that in almost all places 

 which have been colonized from Europe, the intro- 

 duction of such vegetables has been attempted, and in 

 this respect the condition of colonies frequently presents 

 a fair evidence of the progress of horticulture in the 

 '^arent state. 



The Dutch, who found at the Cape of Good Hope 

 ' no other fruits than the chestnut, a nut like the wild 

 almond and the wild plum, and no culinary plants 

 but a sort of vetch,'* have rendered that colony, as 

 regards its vegetable productions, one of the most in- 

 teresting spots with which we are acquainted. Here 

 are to be seen fruits and flowers, beautiful shrubs, and 

 the most magnificent trees, all collected together from 

 every climate and quarter of the globe, and all flou- 

 rishing in the greatest perfection. 



Our colonists in New South Wales have naturalized 

 in that delightful climate nearly all the culinary 

 vegetables which are to be found in this country, and 

 in the market at Sydney some of these are to be seen 

 in a state of greater perfection than can be given to 

 them in this climate. The fruits of the South of 

 Europe are likewise successfully cultivated, and pine- 

 apples, together with many other productions of the 

 tropics, are raised with as little trouble as attends the 

 rearing of cucumbers and melons in this country. 



There are good reasons for believing that during 

 the time of their ascendancy in Britain the Romans 

 introduced various vegetable productions, together 

 with the practice of their mode of gardening. This art 

 never, however, attained to any degree of perfection in 

 this country until the latter end of the seventeenth cen- 



* London's Encyclopaedia of Gardening, p. 108. 

 VOL. xv. 18* 



