G6 HISTORY OF GARDENING. Part I. 



Subsect. 3. Spanish and Portuguese Gardening, in respect to its horticultural 

 Productions and Planting. 



301. Horticulture has made but little progress in Spain. The earliest of the few 

 Spanish authors who have written on gardens, is Herrera, whose book on rural economy 

 appeared early in the seventeenth century. It contains a treatise on gardens (Be las 

 Huertas), in which he distinguishes only two sorts; one for " delight and provision for 

 the house," and the other for supplying the public market. Private gardens, he says, 

 need not be extensive ; those for selling vegetables and fruits should be near a town or 

 village, and well supplied with water. He gives directions for cultivating the vine, fig, 

 olive, apple, pear, and the common culinary plants. Of these, the soil and climate are 

 peculiarly favorable to the alliaceous and cucurbitaceous tribes, some sorts of which, as the 

 onion and winter-melon, form articles of foreign commerce. 



302. The fruits of Spain are more numerous than those of any other European country. 

 Besides all those of Italy, native or acclimated, Spain possesses the date, tamarind, and 

 various fruits of the West Indies. The varieties of the grape, fig, melon, and orange 

 are numerous, and many of them excellent. The pine-apple is little cultivated in 

 Spain ; but is grown in a few places, in the southern provinces (Jacob), in the open air. 



303. Culinary herbs and roots are not much attended to in Spain. Onions and garlic 

 are in universal use ; and the sweet potato* (Conrolrulus batatas) is cultivated in various 

 places. The British residents import their potatoes from their native country. 



304. Forcing is unknown in Spain, but there are hot-houses for plants at Madrid, and 

 at Coimbra and Montserrat in Portugal. 



305. Planting timber-trees or hedges is scarcely known in either Spain or Portugal. 



Sect. X. Of the Rise, Progress, and present State of Gardening in European Turkey. 



306. Of Turkish gardening, when the country was under the Romans, nothing is 

 known. The Roman taste would pass to Byzantium when the seat of empire 

 was removed there in the fourteenth century by Constantino ; but as to its history when 

 the rest of Europe was enveloped in ignorance and superstition, very little is known. 

 The numerous Greek authors on rural matters (Geoponici), who wrote between the 

 fourth and fourteenth centuries, do little more than copy Columella and other Latin 

 georgical writers ; they mention very few plants as ornamental, and treat chiefly of 

 agriculture, vineyards, and poultry. 



307. The modern taste for gardens in Turkey is materially influenced by their national 

 character, and the nature of the climate. Gardens of taste are considered places of shade, 

 repose, and luxurious enjoyment ; not of active recreation, or a varied display of verdant 

 scenery. " For some miles round Adrianople," Lady M. W. Montague observes, in 1717, 

 " one sees nothing but gardens. The rivers are bordered with fruit-trees, under which 

 the citizens divert themselves in the evenings ; not in walking, which is not a Turkish 

 pleasure, but in seating themselves on a carpet spread on the turf, under the thick shade 

 of a tree ; there they take coffee, and smoke amidst vocal or instrumental music, groups 

 of dancing females, and other sports." 



308. The gardens of the sultan at Constantinople acquired a degree of celebrity through 

 the letters of Lady M. W. Montague, to which, it appears from subsequent authors who 

 have examined them, they are by no means entitled. These gardens were visited by Dr. 

 Pouqueville in 1798, and it is generally allowed that he has described them with as little 

 imagination and as much accuracy as any writer. The grand seignior's gardener was then 

 a German, a native of Rastadt, by name Jaques, whose salary was 6000 piastres a-year. 

 He conducted Dr. Pouqueville and his companion between the first aYid second ram- 

 parts of the town, which form the natural fortifications of the seraglio on the side to the 

 sea. 



The palace is, properly speaking, a town within itself, having its walls crowned with battlements, and 



empire ; so that the destination of the place 1 

 the last fifteen hundred years. The first garden they saw was a place enclosed on three sides, with a 

 palisade, the fourth side being formed by the rampart. It was filled with shrubs ; such as early roses, 

 heliotropes, and others, distributed in clumps, with several beams, and a great deal of rubbish lying about. 

 At last they arrived at the entrance of the sultan's garden. 



The gatrwni/ to the garden is of white marble, about fifteen feet high, by four wide, decorated with 

 columns, in a very bad taste. A treillagc, twenty-five feet high and fifteen wide, extremely massy, forms 

 a cross, running each way, from one side to the other of the garden, dividing it into four equal divisions. 

 In the centre of the cross, it forms a dome over a small basin of white marble, in which is a jet-dreau 

 Jaques ordered some of the men to make it plav, but the water did not rise above six feet It was, indeed, 

 an exhibition much below mediocrity- The four squares formed by this cross, are planted with flowers, and 

 in the middle of each are basins again, with jets-dPeau quite in miniature That to the left, as we entered, 

 appealed the most singular of them. After the water has risen to the height of about four feet, it divides 

 like a parasol, and each stream falls upon a shell, upon the circuit of the basin, which again divides it 

 into an infinite number of still smaller streams, scarcely bigger than threads. We contemplated this chef. 

 (Tmuvrc for some minutes, and thought it very pretty for amusing children. 



