PARKS AND GARDENS. 95 



gathered on the Cordilleras of South America, or the plains 

 of India, often has a greater value than the living plant in an 

 European hot-house: cultivation effaces somewhat of the 

 original natural character ; the constraint which it produces 

 disturbs the free organic development of the separate parts. 

 The physiognomic character of plants, and their assemblage 

 in happily contrasted groups, is not only an incitement to 

 the study of nature, and itself one of the objects of that study, 

 but attention to the physiognomy of plants is also of great 

 importance in landscape gardening in the art of composing 

 a garden landscape. I will resist the temptation to expatiate 

 in this closely adjoining field of disquisition, and content 

 myself with bringing to the recollection of my readers that, 

 as in the earlier portion of the present volume, I found 

 occasion to notice the more frequent manifestation of a deep 

 feeling for nature among the Semitic, Indian, and Iraunian 

 nations, so also the earliest ornamental parks mentioned in 

 history belonged to middle and southern Asia. The gardens 

 of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos mountain ( 128 ), 

 are described by Diodorus, and the fame of them induced 

 Alexander to turn aside from the direct road, in order to 

 visit them during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic 

 horse pastures. The parks of the Persian kings were adorned 

 with cypresses, of which the form, resembling obelisks, 

 recalled the shape of flames of fire, and which, after the 

 appearance of Zerdusht (Zoroaster), were first planted by 

 Gushtasp around the sanctuary of the fire temple. It was, 

 perhaps, thus that the form of the tree led to the fiction of 

 the Paradisaical origin of cypresses ( 129 ). The Asiatic 

 terrestrial paradises (irapa^taot), were early celebrated in 

 more western countries ( 130 > ; and the worship of trees even 



