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wish, that the portraits of many of those delightful wri- 

 ters on this science, whose pens have adorned France, 

 (justly termed from its climate la terre classique d'hor- 

 ticulture), were selected and engraved ; for many of 

 their portraits have never yet been engraved. If this 

 selection were accompanied with a few brief notices of 

 them and their works, it would induce many in this 

 country to peruse some of the most fascinating pro- 

 ductions that ever issued from the press. Amongst 

 so many, whose portraits and memoirs would interest 

 us, I will mention those of Champier, who distin- 

 guished himself at the battle of Aignadel, and who 

 published at Lyons, in 1533, Campus Elisius Galliae 

 amenitate referens ; Charles Etienne, who, in 1529, 

 produced his Praedium Rusticum ; and who with Lei- 

 bault published the Maison Rustique, of which up- 

 wards of thirty editions have been published, (and 

 which our Gervase Markham calls a work of infinite 

 excellencie) ; Paulmier de Grenlemesnil, a most esti- 

 mable man, physician to Charles IX., and who died 

 at Caen in 1588, and wrote a treatise de Vino et Po- 

 maceo ; and the only act of whose long life that one 

 regrets is, that his great skill was the means of re-es- 

 tablishing the health of Charles, who, with his mo- 

 ther, directed the horrid Massacre of St. Bartholo- 

 mew; Cousin, who died in the prison of Besancon, 

 and wrote De Hortorum laudibus ; that patriarch of 

 agriculture and of horticulture, Olivier de Serres, 

 whose sage and philosophic mind composed a work 

 rich with the most profound reflections, and whose 

 genius and merit were so warmly patronized by " le 



