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ductions were added to the catalogue of Ceres and 

 Flora. These great high-priests of nature, reduced 

 at once, to fixed principles and invariable rules, the 

 study, and by the classification of plants according 

 to their natural affinities, demonstrated, that, like 

 man, their domestic life was regulated and sweeten- 

 ed by the presence of the gentler sex, and their 

 being depended upon constitutions and habits pe- 

 culiar to themselves. 



In England, during the reigns of Henry and 

 Elizabeth, much of the taste and natural beauty of 

 the gardens of Rome were lost sight of, and substi- 

 tuted by an artificial and grotesque deformity, which 

 maintained for many years, and which, by torturing 

 the box, the yew, and evergreens, into the shape 

 of beasts and other whimsical forms, degraded the 

 standard of horticulture — so that many of the Eng- 

 lish gardens of that period are described, as being 

 adorned with yew trees in the shape of giants — 

 Noah's ark cut in holly — St. George and the dragon, 

 in box — cypress lovers — laureline bears, and all the 

 race of root-bound monsters which flourished, and 

 looked tremendous around the edges of every grass 

 plat.* 



But a better spirit soon succeeded, and the works 

 and philosophy of Dr. William Turner, the father 

 of English botany and gardening, gave a right direc- 



* See the eloquent address of Mr. Poinsett, in 1836, before the Horticul- 

 tural Society of South Carolina, 



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