[41 ] 



VII. On the Cultivation of the Polianthes Tuberosa, or 

 Tuberose ; with its Botanical Description and Figure. By 

 Richard Anthony Salisbury, Esq. F.R.S. fyc* 



Read December 2, 1806. • 



Th e charms of Horticulture, in every civilized nation, have 

 been acknowledged by men of all ranks, from the highest 

 prince down to the lowest cottager. While the graver duty of 

 the historian has been simply to commemorate the calm and 

 innocent delights which it affords, the holy mythologist has 

 exalted it as the sole employment of our first parents in para- 

 dise ; and poets have embellished their most enchanting verses 

 with its productions; so that to offer a long and laboured 

 panegyric upon any single branch of it, to a Society instituted 

 for the express purpose of encouraging them all, would, in 

 the emphatic language of an old writer, be like vainly at- 

 tempting to paint the lily, add a perfume to the violet, or gild 

 refined gold. The field before us, moreover, is no less exten- 

 sive than that of the whole globe, which is in fact one immense 

 garden, covered with vegetables common to every animal that 

 exists ; but Providence has in infinite wisdom allotted to man, 

 the proud pre-eminence over all ; his wants, if he is not indo- 

 lent, being invariably first supplied. In those earlier stages of 

 society, however, when the ground was first cultivated, it must 

 have been inconceivably difficult to exclude various animals 

 both carnivorous and herbivorous, from the immediate pre- 

 cincts of human habitations ; driven as they now are from 

 vol. t. G 



