74 Gardening and Botany qf Spain. 



pleasure-gardens belonging to the city, all furnished with 

 beautiful fountains of the purest water. All the banks of 

 the rivers near Grenada are embelHshed with numerous 

 carmenes, or enclosed gardens. They are chiefly appropriated 

 to the culture of flowers and fruit trees, standards as well as 

 trained ; they also have their statues, cascades, and groups of 

 figures. A garden, to be denominated a carmen, must be 

 situated on the bank of a river. 



Cordova, whose inhabitants are now almost as ignorant, as 

 they were formerly illustrious for their learning, at a time too 

 when the rest of Europe was plunged in the deepest barbarism, 

 does not show the same taste for gardening as its neighbours 

 of Seville and Grenada, notwithstanding it possesses equal 

 facilities : it has, however, a few, of which those belonging 

 to the bishop are respectable. In Murcia and Orihuela 

 de Segura a taste for fruit-gardens prevails : some, however, 

 in Murcia, those of the Countess de Valle St. Juan, the 

 Marquis of Espinardo, the silk manufactory, and some 

 others, are worthy of a visit; and in Orihuela those of the 

 Marquis of Rafal * and the Count of Arneva, and par- 

 ticularly one possessed by the marquis in Beniel, a town 

 situated hardly a league to the westward of Orihuela, 

 though this garden, from the number and variety of plants 

 naturalised there, deserves the name of botanic rather than 

 that of pleasure garden. In this I saw many of the plants 

 already enumerated in my descriptions of Valencia, Puzol, 

 Principe Pio, Cadiz, Puerto de Santa Maria, and Seville ; but 

 the sight of so many Pelargonii, Cacti, ^'loes. Agaves, 

 -Euphorbm aphylla, Cotyledon orbiculata, Portulacaria afra, 

 and other American, African, and Asiatic plants, all growing 

 together as if under their native skies, surprised me most 

 agreeably. I was equally pleased to see a garden hedge com- 

 posed entirely of the fragrant Yerba luisa (Aloysm citriodora), 

 the leaves of which are frequently used, in Spain, to make an 

 infusion in the manner of tea, of great service in stomachic 

 complaints. In the low irrigated lands of Murcia and 

 Orihuela, there is not a house or cottage which has not its 

 garden well stocked with carnations, double mulberry- 

 coloured wallflowers. Job's tears, Canna indica, Jasminium 

 grandiflorum, ^Rosmarinus and /Salvia officinalis, O'cymum 

 basilicum, bullatum, and minimum; and ^rtemism ar- 

 borescens. 



* In this garden I saw, for the first time, bearing blossoms and frnit, the 

 Cdctus cylindricus of Lamai'ck ; and I likewise examined the Anona Cheri- 

 violia, which bears plentifully most delicious fruit, each weighing from four 

 ounces to two pounds ! 



