60 HOUSE, GARDEN, AND FIELD 



Christmas roses, dahlias or fuchsias ; the kitchen-garden 

 no potatoes, rhubarb, or currants. No botanical gardens 

 existed anywhere, for the first were founded in Pisa and 

 Padua in the sixteenth century (1545), while England 

 did not possess one till near a century later (Oxford, 

 1632). 



Under the Tudors all the useful arts made steady pro- 

 gress. Gardens became frequent, and some of them 

 attained lordly proportions, as we see from Bacon's well- 

 known Essay. In the Netherlands the development of 

 horticulture was both more scientific and more rapid than 

 in England. It was from Holland and Flanders that our 

 forefathers learned how to raise better varieties of vege- 

 tables, fruit-trees and flowers, as well as bigger and more 

 profitable breeds of oxen, sheep and horses, how to keep 

 sheep alive on roots instead of slaying them at Martinmas, 

 or starving them through the winter. Holland taught us 

 the value of the so-called artificial grasses, and the possi- 

 bility of a continual succession of crops. Nor did the 

 improvements which we got from Holland concern agri- 

 culture and horticulture alone. Holland taught our fore- 

 fathers navigation, banking, book-keeping and the use of 

 machinery. Englishmen have shown that they too can do 

 great things. Our railways and electric telegraphs, our 

 colonies and our parliaments are the products of an 

 energetic and thoughtful race. But we do not follow up 

 our discoveries with that minute attention to detail which 

 certain other nations have shown. If we had been more 

 docile, we might have learned yet more from Holland. 

 Holland, by nature the poorest country in the world, 

 where according to the old jest, men live aboard, a country 

 drowned with water, and much of it below sea-level,, a 

 country without rocks, hills, forests or mines, teaches very 

 distinctly that all the advantages of soil, climate and 

 mineral wealth are of small importance in comparison 

 with knowledge, industry and method. 



The long succession of descriptive books which have 



