26 HISTORY OF GARDENING. PART I. 



The bastardising of the cucumis tribe, by proximity, and the striking phenomena of the 

 male and female hemp, have introduced some vague ideas of the sexuality of vegetables ; 

 but the use of leaves, by far the most important knowledge which a gardener can possess, 

 seems no where understood by ordinary master-gardeners. Grafting and layering are 

 practised without any knowledge of the effects of the returning sap, or of the exclusion 

 of air and light. Nothing can be worse than the practice of budding orange-trees at 

 Nervi ; to be convinced of which, it is only necessary to compare the plants imported 

 from thence, with those brought from Malta or Paris. The culture of the vine, the olive, 

 and the fig, belongs to the rural economy of the country ; that of the vine is abundantly 

 careless, and the practice of the caprification of the fig, though laughed at by the pro- 

 fessors, is still followed in various places near Rome and Naples. 



112. Religious and lunar observances are still followed by the gardeners in most parts of 

 Italy. With the Romans it was customary before any grand operation of agriculture 

 was undertaken, to consult or invoke the god of that department, as of Flora, Pomona, 

 &c. and to pay attention to the age of the moon and other signs. A good deal of this 

 description of ceremony is still carried on in general economy, by the priests and 

 farmers, and gardening has not yet entirely thrown off the same badge of ignorance 

 and religious slavery. Many gardeners regulate their sowings of kitchen-crops by the 

 moon, others call the priests to invoke a blessing on large breadths of any main crop ; 

 some, on minor occasions, officiate for themselves, and we have seen a poor market- 

 gardener at Savonna muttering a sort of grace to the virgin over a bed of new-sown 

 onions. Father Clarici, a priest who published Istoria e Culture delle Piante, &c. so 

 late as 1726, countenances most of these practices, and describes many absurd and foolish 

 ceremonies used for procuring good crops, and destroying insects. 



113. Of the Italian authors on gardening, few or none are original. Filippo Re has 

 written a great many books, and may be compared to our Bradley. Silvo Sigismondi, 

 of Milan, has written a work on English gardening, resembling that of Hirschfield, of 

 which it is, in great part, a translation. Clarici is a very copious writer on culinary 

 gardening, and the culture of flowers ; and the most approved writer on the orange 

 tribe is Gallesio of Savonna. 



SECT. II. Of the Revival, Progress, and present State of Gardening in Holland and 



Flanders. 



114. Gardening was first brought to a high degree of perfection in Holland and the 

 Netherlands. The crusades, in the twelfth century, are generally supposed to have 

 excited a taste for building and gardening in the north of Europe. But from Ste- 

 phanus and Gesner, it appears that a taste for plants existed among the Dutch, even 

 previously to this period. It is to be regretted that scarcely any materials are to be 

 found from which to compose such a history as this interesting circumstance requires. 

 Harte (Essays on Agriculture] conjectures that the necessities arising from the original 

 barrenness of the soil (that of Flanders having been formerly like what Arthur Young de- 

 scribes Norfolk to have been nearly a century ago), together with a certain degree of 

 liberty, the result of the remoteness of the situation from kings and priests, may have 

 contributed to improve their agriculture ; and that the wealth acquired by the commercial 

 men of Holland, then the most eminent in the world, enabled them to indulge in 

 country-houses and gardens, and to import foreign plants. To this we may add, 

 that the climate and soil are singularly favorable for horticulture and floriculture, the 

 two departments in which the Dutch are most eminent. 



SUBSECT. 1. Dutch Gardening, as an Art of Design and Taste. 



115. The Dutch are generally considered as having a particular taste in gardening, yet 

 their gardens, Hirschfield observes, appear to differ little in design from those of the 

 French. The characteristics of both are symmetry and abundance of ornaments. The 

 only difference to be remarked is, that the gardens of Holland are more confined, more 

 covered with frivolous ornaments, and intersected with still, and often muddy pieces of 

 water. The gardens of Ryswick, Houslaerdyk, and Sorgvliet were, in the beginning 

 of the last century, the most remarkable for geometrical beauty of form, richness in trees 

 and plants, and careful preservation. It is singular, our author observes, that the Dutch 

 are so fond of intersecting their gardens with canals and ditches of stagnant water, 

 which, so far from being agreeable, are muddy and ugly, and fill the air with unwhole- 

 some vapours. Yet they carry this taste, which has no doubt originated in the nature 

 of their country, to the East Indies ; and the numerous country-houses belonging to 

 the Dutch settlement in Batavia are all furnished with gardens and canals like those 

 in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam ; as if to render the unwholesome air of that 

 country still more dangerous. Every field is there crossed by a canal ; and houses on 

 eminences are surrounded at great expense by moats and draw-bridges like those of the 

 Hague, Such is the influence of habit, and the love of country ; and, therefore, how- 



