^ HORTICTTLTURAL SOCIETY. M 



colour have given way, and wild nature, when her features do 

 not j)lease or satisfy the gardener, has been forced at his bidding 

 to assume those which he desires. In showing how such 

 changes have been brought about, he would have to give a 

 prominent place to the influence of the Horticultural Society ; 

 but no picture of its workings would be true unless it gave a 

 representation of the darkness ia which the science lay before its 

 institution. In one of the earHest accounts which we have of 

 English ornamental gardens, that of Didymus Mountain, pub- 

 lished at the end of the sixteenth century, the handsomest flowers 

 he could name were jasmines, damask roses, rose campines, pinks, 

 heartsease, gOliflowers, and carnations, — short-Kved plants of 

 little use for decoration, as the word is now applied. An 

 artificial chmate, created by heatmg contrivances, was unheard 

 of, and consequently no plants from countries warmer than our 

 own could be cultivated. Even the hardy flowers of the East, 

 the anemone, ranunculus, and hyacinth of Spia and Persia, 

 had not found then- way from Constantiuople to the West. 

 By the middle of the seventeenth century, although the art of 

 heating had begun to be practised, the paucity of plants suitable 

 for ornamental purposes had not greatly diminished. We now 

 hear of oranges and pine-apples, myrtles and oleanders, which 

 must have been preserved during mnter in heated rooms. On 

 the waU of one of the rooms of the Eoyal Horticultural Society 

 hangs a small water-colour drawing of the time,* of which 

 the annexed woodcut is a copy, representing Mr. Eose, His 

 Majesty's gardener at Hampton Court, presenting the first pine- 



* It bears the inscription " Drawn from tlie original pictxire in the collection 

 of the Earl of Waldegrave, at Strawberry Hill." 



