8 



HISTORY OF GARDENING. 



PART f. 



Aristotle's materia medica was chiefly plants. 

 Solomon wrote on botany as a philosopher, and 

 appears to have cultivated a general collection, 

 independently of his plants of ornament. 



30. Floivers, as decorations, must have been 

 very soon used ori account of their brilliant colors 

 and smell. The Greeks, Theophrastus informs 

 us, (Hist. Plant, lib. vi. c. 5. ) cultivated roses, 

 gilly-flowers, violets, narcissi, and the iris ; and 

 we read in Aristophanes (Achani. v. 212.), that 

 a market for flowers was held at Athens, where 

 the baskets were very quickly disposed of. From 

 the writings of other authors, we learn that a con- 

 tinual use was made of flowers throughout all 

 Greece. Not only were they then, as now, the 

 ornament of beauty, and of the altars of the gods, 

 but youth crowned themselves with them in the 

 ftes : priests in religious ceremonies ; and guests 

 in convivial meetings. Garlands of flowers were 

 suspended from the gates in times of rejoicing ; 

 and, what is still more remarkable, and more 

 remote from our manners, the philosophers them- 

 selves wore crowns of flowers, and the warriors 

 ornamented their foreheads with them in days of 

 triumph. These customs existed in every part 

 of the East. There were at Athens, as after- 

 wards at Rome, florists, whose business it was to 

 weave crowns (coronarue) and wreaths of flowers. 



Some of these crowns and garlands were of one species of flower; others of different 

 species ; or of branches of peculiar plants, relating to some symbolical or mythological 

 idea. Hence the term, coronarue, was applied to such plants as were consecrated to those 

 uses, and of which some were cultivated, and others gathered in the fields ; but the name 

 was applied to all such as were distinguished by the beauty or fragrance of their flowers. 

 {Curt. Spreng. Hist. R. Herb. lib. i. & ii. ; Paschalis de Coronis, lib. x. ; Sabina by 

 Battinger, in N. Mon. Mag. Jan. and Feb. 1819. ; Theojrfirastus by Stackhouse, c.) 



31. The first implement used in cultivating the soil, all antiquarians agree, must have been 

 of the pick kind. A medal of the greatest antiquity, dug up in the island of Syracuse, 

 contained the impression of such an implement (fig. 2. a). Some of the oldest Egyptian 



hieroglyphics have similar representations (6) ; and Eckeberg has figured what may be 

 considered as the primitive spade of China (c). In the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, when Peru was discovered by the Spaniards, the gardeners of that country had no 

 other spade than a pointed stick, of which the more industrious made use of two at a time. 

 (d) The Chinese implement bears the highest marks of civilisation, since it has a hilt or 

 cross handle, and a tread for the foot ; and consequently supposes the use of shoes or 

 sandals by the operator, and an erect position of his body. The Roman spade (ligo\ 

 those of Italy (zappa), and of France (becJie}, are either flattened or two-clawed picks, 

 which are worked entirely by the arms, and keep the operator constantly bent almost to 

 the ground ; or long-handled wooden spatula? also worked solely by the arms, but with 

 the body in a more erect position. Both kinds equally suppose a bare-footed operator, 

 like the Grecian and Peruviafi gardeners, and those of Prance and Italy at the present day. 



