April io, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



171 



stems. But neither of these forms is found in the earHest 

 monuments, nor would they readily occur to an architect 

 under ordinary conditions. Tlieir existence is best explained 

 by the belief that the plain shafts and rectangular capitals 

 originally employed were decorated for festivals with sheaths 

 of reeds and wreaths of blossoms, and that the charming 

 effects thus produced were afterwards translated into stone."* 

 Thus gardening paid back to architecture a portion of the debt 

 it owed for its own development. It is hardly needful to refer 

 to the frequency with which Lotus blossoms appear in Egypt- 

 ian picture records, held in the hands of priest and king during 

 the performance of the most sacred rites. There is abundant 

 testimony — graven, painted and written — to prove that flowers, 

 and especially the Lotus, were thought essential to every act 

 which the Egyptian performed in life, and followed him even 

 into the grave. Only a few months ago withered garlands of 

 Roses were unearthed from certain tombs in Lower Egypt — 

 tombs which date, indeed, from perhaps the third century after 

 Christ, but nevertheless embody the traditional customs of a 

 far earlier time. 



When we pass from the gardens of Egypt to those of Baby- 

 lonia and Assyria, historical evidence is not so rich, but still 

 convinces us that formal arrangements prevailed. There was 

 as much reason here as we found in Egypt why picturesque 

 and varied effects should not have been desired, and Avhy gar- 

 dening should have been the handmaid of architecture. Here 

 again was an immense, flat, featureless country, peopled by a 

 race of mighty builders. 



Nothing that existed in all antiquity was more famous than 

 the "hanging gardens " of Babylon. They are as well-known 

 by name as the Pyramids of Egypt, and, like the pyramids, 

 were counted among the Seven Wonders of the World. Yet 

 not a trace of them remains on the site of Babylon, unless it be 

 in certain foundation walls which have been assumed to be- 

 long to them; and from the historian's page we can scarcely 

 gather much accurate knowledge. They were designed in 

 harmony with the design of the Chaldaean temple — in the 

 form of a great square, artificial mound, the several stages of 

 which, rising one above the other, rapidly decreased in size, 

 leaving wide terraces on all four sides. Strabo thus describes 

 them : " The shape ... is a square, and each side of it 

 measures four plethra. It consists of vaulted terraces raised 

 one above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. 

 These are hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the 

 largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults and the ter- 

 races are constructed of baked brick and asphalt. The ascent 

 to each story is by stairs." Modern artists, relying on this 

 passage, have often pictured the terraces as flanked by I'ows 

 of great stone columns, and their fantasies have been'repro- 

 duced even in serious histories of gardening, whose authors, 

 while diligendy consulting all records which deal professedly 

 with this art, do not seem to have thought it needful to study 

 architectural evidence with regard to architectural facts. Col- 

 imins were not used in Babylonia, where no building stone 

 existed,! and were rarely employed even in Assyria, as, though 

 stone could readily here be obtained, the Assyrians clung to 

 the precedents of Babylonia whence their civilization had 

 been derived. " Many stately rooms of all kinds," says Diodo- 

 rus, whom other writers confirm, were constructed along the 

 sides of the terraces ; but we must believe that their arched 

 roofs were supported by solid piers, not columns. Or, as the 

 picture-reliefs show a frequent use of slender shafts, construc- 

 ted of metal or of wood sheathed with metal, to support the 

 walls or porticos of small pavilions or kiosks, the apartments 

 may have been fianked by projecting pavilions thus sustained. 

 The surface of each terrace was covered with a coat of bitumen 

 to prevent the percoladon of water into its mass of sun-dried 

 brick; and upon this was laid a stratum of earth thick enough to 

 nourish flowers, shrubs, and even large trees, among which 

 the Cypress and the Palm were doubdess most conspicuous. 

 Strabo says that at the sides of the stairs were " water engines 

 by means of which, persons, appointed expressly for the pur- 

 pose, are continually employed in raising water from the 

 Euphrates into the garden ; for the river . . . flows through the 

 middle of the city and the garden is on the side of the river." 

 And Diodorus says that one of the apartments "had in it cer- 

 tain engines whereby it drew plenty of water out of the river 

 through certain conduits and conveyances from the platform 

 of the garden, and nobody without was the wiser or knew 

 what was done." Nevertheless, we cannot fancy any extensive 

 hydraulic machinery. No trace of preparation for such ma- 

 chinery — no tanks, canals or conduits — have been found in 

 the great ardficial mounds which supported the palaces of 



*See Perrot and Chipiez, History of Ancient Egyptiajt Art. 



t See Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldcea and Assyria. 



Assyrian kings. The most recent historians believe that 

 their enormous water-supply must have been carried up 

 from the adjacent Tigris by endless files of human beings ; 

 and thus, too, the hanging gardens of Babylon must have 

 been watered ; or, at the most, such simple hand machines 

 and wheels as are still used on the banks of the Nile may have 

 served to pass the buckets up from one terrace to another. 

 Direct architectural evidence apart, it seems unlikely that large 

 tanks and conduits could have been constructed in a land 

 where unburnt brick was the main building material and 

 stone was used merely to face the lower portions of interior 

 walls. 



The walls of the terraces were twenty-two feet in thick- 

 ness, and tradition has given them an enormous area. But if 

 we accept even the widest measurements of ancient writers 

 (who were more prone to exaggeration than to understate- 

 ment) we can compute them to have covered a space not 

 much exceeding three acres; and even if this denotes the size, 

 not of the lowest but of the uppermost terrace, it does not 

 mean a very large garden, according to modern ideas. Yet 

 when we consider the wholly artificial and very singular method 

 of their construction, and the surprise a traveler must have 

 felt to find a garden of any size flourishing under such difficult 

 conditions, we can easily see how the hanging gardens won 

 their exceptional fame. 



The history of Mesopotamia falls into three great periods — 

 those of the early Chaldsean or Babylonian dominion, of the Assy- 

 rian or Ninevite empire, and of the second Chaldaean empire, 

 when Babylon more than renewed its ancient powerand splen- 

 dor. The hanging gardens of Babylon were associated in all 

 classic times with the name of the fabled Semiramis, and their 

 origin was sometimes carried as far back as the year B. C. 2000, 

 into the period of the first Chaldagan empire. But even Diodo- 

 rus saw the folly of this idea and attributed them to the second 

 period of Babylon's glory. A plausible supposition is that they 

 were built by Nebuchadnezzar, the mightiest monarch of this 

 second period, who left his capital the most splendid city in the 

 world, to console his wife, a Median princess, for the loss she 

 suffered when she left the mountains of her native land for the 

 level plains of Mesopotamia. But, in truth, nothing is known of 

 their origin or its date. They were still flourishing in the 

 time of Alexander, but perished, we can imagine, when ruin 

 overtook the town, even more quickly than its other vast 

 monuments, constructed like themselves of thick cores of crude 

 brick, only slightly protected from drenching rains and scorch- 

 ing suns by a facing of kiln-dried brick or of stone. 

 New York. M. G. Van Reiisselaer. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



nPHE meedng of the Royal Horticultural Society on March 

 -•- I2di was of exceptional interest, because of Mr. J. Gilbert 

 Baker's lecture on the Saxifrages. That the addresses by spe- 

 cialists, which form part of the Society's programme for the 

 year, are likely to promote the welfare of the Society, as well 

 as of horticulture itself, was plainly indicated by the nimiber 

 of fellows and visitors who assembled to hear Mr. Baker's lec- 

 ture. Saxifrages do not appeal with much force to the popu- 

 lar gardening spirit, although both Mr. Baker and his sciendfic 

 view of the genus and Mr. George Paul in his instructive prac- 

 tical paper on the cultivated Saxifrages made it abundantly 

 clear that the genus is eminently worthy of general cidtiva- 

 tion. The geographical distribution of the 180 species recog- 

 nized by botanists, the diversity of character in habit, foliage 

 and flower, the beauty of the flowers of many of the species, 

 and the comparatively few hybrids known, were the principal 

 points dealt with by Mr. Baker. About ninety species are in 

 cultivation, the best of which l)elong to the section Kab- 

 schia of Engler, and of which S. Bitrseriana, S. tnedia, S. viar- 

 ginata, S. ccesia and 6". Tombeanensis are examples. In the 

 group called Porphyron we have the pretty 6". oppositifolia, S. 

 retusa and 6". Pyrenaica. These are all cushion-like in habit 

 and bear numerous large Primula-like flowers. 6*. pyrainida- 

 lis and .5*. loftgifolia are the best of another group, which is 

 characterized by rosettes of longish foliage and tall, graceful, 

 pyramidal racemes of beautiful white flowers. S.pyraviidalis 

 is one of the most beautiful of all plants for the rockery, and 

 even when grown in pots for the green-house it has few rivals. 

 Mr. Paul's paper was devoted chiefly to showing how easily 

 Saxifrages, as a rule, may be cultivated in an ordinary garden. 

 Both these papers, as well as two others by specialists on the 

 cultivation of Saxifrages, will be published in full in the resus- 

 citated journal of the Society, the first number of which was 



