442 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It must be said, however, that the lists are in several cases incomplete, 

 and the book cannot therefore be entirely relied upon. 



A better and more accurate attempt at the same object is the paper 

 on Belgian fruits by Charles Gilbert, pubhshed in the " Journal 

 of the Royal Linnean Society of Belgium " in 1874. This gives the 

 names of all Belgian raisers and their gains, and includes some very 

 excellent critical notes upon the re-namings that so many of these 

 fruits have undergone. 



The cultural works pubhshed towards the end of the nineteenth 

 century are very numerous, but they need not be detailed here. Refer- 

 ence cannot, however, be omitted to the excellent work of Pijnaert, 

 " Les Serres Vergers," which was published about 1880 and contains 

 the fullest directions for the forcing of all fruits under glass with a 

 wealth of detail not met with in any other work I am aware of. 



Periodical Literature. — Belgium has been fortunate in her periodical 

 literature, and the skill of her native gardeners and lithographers 

 has made much of it of permanent value. Especially useful is the 

 " Bulletin d' Arboriculture," which was started in 1865. The articles 

 and coloured plates of fruits are numerous and good, and an excellent 

 index added in 1883 renders these readily available. 



Another valuable publication is the " Belgique Horticole." 

 This is especially good in historical information, and the complete 

 series runs from 1850 to 1885. 



The " Flore des Serres," though generally devoted to flowering 

 plants, has some good plates of fruits, especially in volume 19 

 (1871-3). 



Italian Works. 



In the earlier part of this paper mention was made of the interesting 

 volume of Venuti as probably the first book dealing exclusively with 

 fruit. There are also a few other Italian authors who merit attention 

 before the more modern works are considered. 



It is natural that early Italian literature should deal very largely 

 with the Vine, but this is rather outside our scope. The authors of 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were mostly adapters or 

 compilers from the ancients, and such books as that of Giovanni 

 Tatti, " Delia Agricoltura " (Venice, 1560), with its short notices 

 of fruits, are of interest only historically. A more useful book was 

 that of G. Soderini, " Trattato della Coltivazione delle Vite e del 

 frutto che se ne puo cavare. . ." (Firenze, 1600). The well-known 

 "Vinti giornate d' Agricoltura " of Agostino Gallo (Torino, 1519) 

 is a type of country book which was fairly common at this time. 



No really important work, however, was published until 1633, 

 when Giovanni Battista Ferrari, a Jesuit monk of Siena, published 

 his " Hesperides, sive de Malorum aureomm cultura et usu." This 

 is a folio, with elaborate plates of oranges and lemons, and of gardens 

 and garden tools. The fruits are very fully described and some 



