There may be another reason for the small advance of gardening in those excellent and more temperate climates, where the air and soil were so apt of themselves to produce the best sorts of fruits, without the necessity of cultivating them by labour and care; whereas the hotter climates, as well as the cold, are forced upon industry and skill, to produce or improve many fruits that grow of themselves in the more temperate regions. However it were, we have very little mention of gardens in old Greece, or in old Rome, for pleasure or with elegance, nor of much curiousness or care, to introduce the fruits of foreign climates, contenting themselves with those which were native of their own; and these were the vine, the olive, the fig, the pear, and the apple: Cato, as I remember, mentions no more; and their gardens were then but the necessary part of their farms, intended particularly for the cheap and easy food of their hinds or slaves, employed in their agriculture, and so were turned chiefly to all the common sorts of plants, herbs, or legumes (as the French call them) proper for common nourishment; and the name of hortus is taken to be from ortus, because it perpetually furnishes some rise or production of something new in the world.

Lucullus, after the Mithridatic war, first brought

cherries from Pontus into Italy, which so generally pleased, and were so easily propagated in all climates, that within the space of about an hundred years, having travelled westward with the Roman conquests, they grew common as far as the Rhine, and passed over into Britain. After the conquest of Africa, Greece, the Lesser Asia, and Syria, were brought into Italy all the sorts of their Mala, which we interpret apples, and might signify no more at first, but were afterwards applied to many other foreign fruits: the apricots coming from Epire, were called Mala Epirotica; peaches from Persia, Mala Persica; citrons of Media, Medica; pomegranates from Carthage, Punica; quinces Cathonea, from a small island in the Grecian seas; their best pears were brought from Alexandria, Numidia, Greece, and Numantia ; as appears by their several appellations: their plums, from Armenia, Syria, but chiefly from Damascus. The kinds of these are reckoned in Nero's time, to have been near thirty, as well as of figs; and many of them were entertained at Rome with so great applause, and so general vogue, that the great captains, and even consular men, who first brought them over, took pride in giving them their own names (by which they run a great while in Rome) as in memory of some great

service or pleasure they had done their country; so that not only laws and battles, but several sorts of apples or Mala, and of pears, were called Manlian and Claudian, Pompeyan and Tiberian; and by several other such noble names.

Thus the fruits of Rome, in about an hundred years, came from countries as far as their conquests had reached; and like learning, architecture, painting, and statuary, made their great advances in Italy, about the Augustan age. What was of most request in their common gardens in Virgil's time, or at least in his youth, may be conjectured by the description of his old Corician's gardens in the fourth of the Georgics; which begins,

Namque sub Oebaliæ memini me turribus alti,1 Among flowers, the roses had the first place, especially a kind which bore twice a year; and none other sorts are here mentioned besides the narcissus, though the violet and the lily were very common, and the next in esteem; especially the Breve Lilium, which was the tuberose. The plants he mentions, are the Apium, which though commonly interpreted parsley, yet comprehends all sorts of smallage, whereof celery is one; Cucumis, which takes in all sorts of melons, as 1 Temple misquotes: alti' should be arcis.'

well as cucumbers; Olus, which is a common word for all sorts of pot-herbs and legumes; Verbenas, which signifies all kinds of sweet or sacred plants that were used for adorning the altars; as bays, olive, rosemary, myrtle: the Acanthus seems to be what we call Pericanthe; but what their Hedera were, that deserved place in a garden, I cannot guess, unless they had sorts of ivy unknown to us; nor what his Vescum Papaver was, since poppies with us are of no use in eating. The fruits mentioned, are only apples, pears, and plums; for olives, vines and figs, were grown to be fruits of their fields, rather than of their gardens. The shades were the elm, the pine, the lime-tree, and the Platanus, or plane-tree; whose leaf and shade, of all others, was the most in request; and having been brought out of Persia, was such an inclination among the Greeks and Romans, that they usually fed it with wine instead of water; they believed this tree loved that liquor, as well as those that used to drink under its shade; which was a great humour and custom, and perhaps gave rise to the other, by observing the growth of the tree, or largeness of the leaves, where much wine was spilt or left, and thrown upon the roots.

'Tis great pity the haste which Virgil seems here to have been in, should have hindered him from entering

farther into the account or instructions of gardening, which he said he could have given, and which he seems to have so much esteemed and loved, by that admirable picture of this old man's felicity, which he draws like so great a master, with one stroke of a pencil in those four words.

Regum æquabat opes animis.

That in the midst of these small possessions, upon a few acres of barren ground, yet he equalled all the wealth and opulence of kings, in the ease, content, and freedom of his mind.

I am not satisfied with the common acceptation of the Mala Aurea, for oranges; nor do I find any passage in the authors of that age, which gives me the opinion, that these were otherwise known to the Romans than as fruits of the eastern climates. I should take their Mala Aurea to be rather some kind of apples, so called from the golden colour, as some are amongst us; for otherwise, the orange-tree is too noble in the beauty, taste and smell of its fruit; in the perfume and virtue of its flowers; in the perpetual verdure of its leaves, and in the excellent uses of all these, both for pleasure and health; not to have deserved any particular mention in the writings of an