BOOK I. GARDENING IN THE BRITISH COLONIES, &c. *O7 



and gives instances of small pieces of surface netted with roots and covered with plants being 

 detached from the marshy shores of other American lakes, and floating about in the water. 

 The bean, pea, apple, artichoke, cauliflowers, and a great variety of other culinary plants 

 are cultivated on them. In the ninth chapter of Humboldt's work will be found an 

 ample account of the useful plants of Mexico. It is singular, that the potatoe, which 

 one would have imagined should have been introduced from the southern continent to 

 Mexico, should have been first carried there from Old Spain. It is not, Humboldt 

 says, a native of Peru, nor to be found between latitudes 12 and 50. In Chili it has 

 been cultivated for a long series of ages, where there is a wild sort with bitter roots. 



SECT. V. Gardening in South America. 



492. Gardening appears to be little known in South America, excepting in the Euro- 

 pean colonies. It is the country, however, of some of our most valuable culinary pro- 

 ductions, as the potatoe ; of the most exquisite fruits, as the pine-apple and Cheremoya ; 

 and of many of our most beautiful flowers, as the dahlia. There is a species of Chili 

 pine (Araucaria), which is considered the largest tree in the world : it has an erect stem, 

 and the seeds are a farinaceous food, and as large as chestnuts. This tree, it is thought, 

 may yet be acclimated, and clothe our northern mountains. The whole of South 

 America is rich in vegetable productions, many of which are unknown in Europe ; but 

 there are now a number of collectors in that country, for the purposes of botany and 

 horticulture. 



SECT. VI. Gardening in the British Colonies, and in other Foreign Settlements of 

 European Nations* 



493. Gardening cannot be displayed to much advantage in distant and precarious ter~ 

 ritorial appendages, where the object is most frequently to acquire the means of return- 

 ing to garden at home. In permanent settlements, however, such as the Cape of Good 

 Hope, Van Diemen's Land, &c. gardening will be resorted to as an art of necessity. 



494. The gardening of any colony will always resemble that of the parent country. It 

 is evident, that wherever a people establish themselves, they will also establish, in part, 

 their arts or manners. All colonists carry with them the seeds of the useful vegetables, 

 which they have been accustomed to cultivate ; and subsequently they attempt to intro- 

 duce the more delicate or luxurious fruits and flowers. 



495. The European governments have established colonial botanic gardens wherever their 

 utility has been made apparent ; and in this, as well as in the ornamental part of garden- 

 ing, it is but fair to state, that the French and Dutch have been before England in point of 

 time, as well as in point of excellence. The Dutch had a fine government garden at the 

 Cape of Good Hope, and another at Batavia in the middle of the seventeenth century. 

 The French had a garden in Cayenne, in 1630. The first colonial botanic garden esta- 

 blished by the English, was that of Jamaica, about 1780. It must also be confessed, 

 that our botanic gardens have hitherto been less useful to horticulture than the govern- 

 ment or residence-gardens, and the botanical gardens of the Dutch ; because in these 

 last, useful plants are the principal objects ; whereas in ours, number of species is, or 

 seems to be, most attended to. Horticulture, in civilised countries, may be deemed suf- 

 ficiently protected and encouraged by its own immediate contributions to the wants and 

 desires of mankind ; but in barbarous countries every art requires protection at the first 

 establishment of a colony. Perhaps there is no way in which man in a civilised state 

 can promote the progress of rude society more, than by introducing new and useful fruits 

 and herbs. The numerous vegetables now used in the domestic economy of civilised 

 society have been collected from various and opposite parts of the globe. Where would 

 be the enjoyments of a European table, if they depended on our native herbs and fruits ? 

 Europe in this respect is under great obligations to Persia and Egypt ; and these coun- 

 tries, and many others of Asia, Africa, and America, are now in their turn receiving 

 great benefits from the colonies of Europeans who settle on them. 



496. As examples of the use of gardening in colonisation, we may refer to the Cape of 

 Good Hope, which possesses at present all the best culinary productions and fruits of 

 Europe and Asia. Till 1660, that the Dutch established a colony there, it had no 

 other fruits than the chestnut, a nut like the wild almond, and what is called the wild plum ; 

 and no culinary plants but a sort of vetch. The first shipment of convicts was landed 

 at Sidney Cove in 1789, and since that period, every horticultural product of Britain has 

 been introduced there, and cultivated with one or two exceptions, in the greatest per- 

 fection. 



497. The influence of gardening comforts, together with instruction, on uncivilised coun- 

 tries, both as to society and climate, and finally on the whole globe itself, cannot be foreseen. 

 The now trackless deserts of arid sand in Africa, may be destined at some future age to 

 be watered and cultivated by the superfluous population of the other quarters of the 

 world. The evaporation and coolness produced by a surface cultivated chiefly by irri- 



