LITERATURE OF GARDENING. 535 



And again 



" Here a rich juice the royal vineyard p'ours, 

 And there the garden yields a waste of flowers." 



Of Laertes it is said 



" Yet busied with his slaves to ease his woe, 

 He dressed the vine and bade the garden blow." 



Epicurus is said to have been the first who laid out 

 a garden at Athens. Hesiod, Homer, Xenophon, Theo- 

 phrastus, Dioscorides, and ^Elian are writers on the 

 subject. Pythagoras and Democritus also wrote treatises 

 on the properties of plants. Theophrastus, the successor 

 of Aristotle, wrote a history of plants, which by some has 

 been ascribed to Aristotle, although admitted not to have 

 been given to the world during his lifetime. However 

 that may be, it is much in advance of any book of an 

 earlier date that I have seen. In it the author not only 

 enumerates by name a great number of plants, but 

 describes them. We have, however, not very much from 

 the Greeks on gardening. 



Coming downwards to the Romans, we find that Cato, 

 Varro, Virgil, Horace, and Martial wrote on trees and 

 flowers, and Columella has a good deal to say on gardens. 

 Varro tells us there are more than fifty authors (Greek 

 and Roman) who have written on agriculture and garden- 

 ing. Pliny's " Natural History" also enters largely into 

 the subject. We think we may fairly claim Virgil's 

 Georgics, 2 and 4, as belonging to the Literature of 

 Gardening, although we should not like to stand sponsor 

 for his theory of grafting. In truth, the Romans seem to 

 have held, contrary to fact, that any one tree could be 

 grafted on any other. In Columella's "Husbandry" the 

 whole of the 3rd and the greater part of the 4th book is 

 taken up with an account of vines and vine culture. He 

 treats of kinds, soil, climate, planting, pruning, digging, 

 and propagating, and states that a vineyard will speedily 

 decay if it is not supported by assiduous culture, for which 



