53" LITERATURE OF GARDENING. 



he gives instructions. From the vine he passes on to the 

 chestnut and oak. In the 5th book he has separate 

 chapters " on the culture of provincial vineyards," " of the 

 several sorts of olive trees/' " of pomiferous trees," and the 

 like. The roth book is "of the culture of gardens." The 

 nth book is also worth perusing, and there is a book con- 

 cerning trees, including vines, olives, figs, nuts, pome- 

 granates, pears, apples, and others too numerous to men- 

 tion, with a separate chapter " of the violet and the rose." 

 He quotes frequently from Virgil, and speaks of Celsus 

 and Atticus, "whom our age has most approved with 

 respect to husbandry." He has one chapter headed, 

 " What must be done every month by accommodating 

 all sorts of work to the times and seasons." Columella's 

 " Husbandry" contains a good deal of sound practical 

 advice as to gardening pleasantly conveyed ; altogether 

 it is a remarkable book for the age in which it was written ; 

 it stands quite alone, and will even bear reading now by 

 those who know enough of the subject to avoid being 

 misled by its few puerilities. There was at that time no 

 theory of gardening ; it was the practice of it handed 

 down from preceding generations, and extended by the 

 Romans, which Columella so amply recorded. 



The Natural History of Pliny is of course generally 

 known. He treats of " the pleasures of the garden," " the 

 laying out of garden ground," "the natural history of 

 plants grown in gardens," " of sowing seeds," " of the 

 maladies of plants and their remedies," and gives a long 

 list of vegetables. He also writes "on the nature of 

 flowers and gardens," and while mentioning that Theo- 

 phrastus among the Greeks has written on the subject 

 of flowers, says none of the Roman authors have, to his 

 knowledge, written expressly of them.* He speaks also of 

 the succession in which flowers blossom the spring flowers 



*He however tells us elsewhere that Cato was the first, and for a long time 

 the only, author who treated of this branch of learning. 



