554 LITERATURE OF GARDENING. 



We have seen that the Literature of Gardening com- 

 mences with the earliest historic period. The work goes 

 on through Jews, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Cartha- 

 genians, Greeks, and Romans, to the fall of the Roman 

 Empire, the beautiful as well as the useful attracting the 

 notice of those several peoples. There is then a blank ; 

 gardening no doubt went on, but I can find no literature 

 of it worth recording. On the revival of learning in the 

 middle ages the Italians, French, and Dutch are the 

 earliest in the field, and are followed by the English and 

 other nations. Shortly after the introduction of printing, 

 books on gardening appear at intervals, till in the seven- 

 teenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries a flood of 

 garden literature pours in upon us. The gardener, the 

 herbalist, the botanist, sometimes working on their indivi- 

 dual lines, and sometimes on mixed lines, succeed each 

 other in due order. The gardener furnishes the physiolo- 

 gical botanist with facts, while the botanist renders the 

 gardener essential service by his labours in the fields of 

 systematic and physiological botany. The botanist's 

 figures and descriptions of nature's plants, and above all 

 his discoveries and publication of the facts of vegetable 

 anatomy, disclose to the view of the practical gardener new 

 fields for the exercise of his industry and skill, which he 

 joyously avails himself of, and the surface of the earth 

 grows more productive and more beautiful by the successive 

 uprising of new forms and tints under his fostering care. 



THE DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GAKDENING IN 

 ENGLAND. 



[From " The Garden," April $th, 1890, p. 312.] 



A VERY scarce tract on landscape gardening has just 

 fallen into my hands. It is entitled " An Essay on 

 Landscape Gardening, by John Dalrymple, Esq., author of 



