S68 GARDENS OF VARIOUS NATIONS. 



near to Chaone, a city of Media, this remarkable woman Semiramis 

 made " another very great garden " in the very middle of it, and built 

 upon it " stately houses of pleasures ; " " whence," says the historian 

 just quoted, "she might both have a delightful prospect into the 

 garden, and view the army as it lay encamped below in the plain." 



Let us pass now from these formal gardens to those of another 

 nation, equally great with the nations above mentioned, and with whom 

 their history is intimately associated, — namely, the Jews. Among this 

 nation we find that the most profound love for Nature existed, as is 

 shown in their poetry and in the cultivation of gardens, which not 

 only were places of resort for conviviality, but which also were used 

 as places of interment, as places of devotion, as well as sometimes for 

 idolatrous worship. These gardens of Palestine were enclosures on the 

 suburbs of towns, and were surrounded by hedges of thorn or walls 

 of stone. To protect these enclosures from robbers or wild beasts 

 watch-towers or lodges were erected, in which was a keeper. In 

 the time of the Romans the gardens of Syria were celebrated for 

 their extreme fertility ; in them grew various flowers and aromatic 

 plants, olives, fig-trees, nuts or walnuts, pomegranates, and numerous 

 other kinds of fruit-trees. In the kitchen garden many sorts of vegetals 

 were grown, among which may be named the cucumber, lettuce, endive, 

 mustard-plant, rue, garlic, and onions. The art of grafting appears 

 to have been known by the Hebrews, but, because the propagation 

 of mixed species was specially forbidden in the Book of Leviticus, 

 stringent laws were made in the Mishna against even the grafting 

 of trees on others of dififerent kinds. The Hebrews seem also to 

 have been conversant with the propagation of plants by cuttings or 

 layers. Water was obtained for the gardens by means of channels 

 or conduits; these being supplied by streams in the vicinity. 



Near to Bethlehem, "in the long vale of Urtis," Solomon nearly 

 three thousand years ago "planted him vineyards, and made him 

 gardens and a ' paradise,' and planted trees in them of all kinds of 

 fruitj, and made' him reservoirs of water to water therewith the wood 

 that bringeth forth trees." These pools or reservoirs still remain. 



