Daines Barrington conjectures that hot-houses and ice-houses were first introduced during Charles the Second's reign, as at the installation dinner at Windsor, (23d, April, 1667) there were cherries, strawberries, and ice-creams. Strawberries and cherries, however, Switzer informs us, had been forced by dung-heat from time immemorial by the London market-gardeners. Lord Bacon suggests, that as we have housed the exotics of hot countries, lemons, oranges, and myrtles to preserve them, so we may house our natives to forward them; and thus have violets, strawberries, and pease, all winter, provided they be sown and removed at proper times.'

Cooke, Lucre, Field, London, and Wise, were celebrated practical gardeners at this time; the two latter had the first considerable nursery garden at Brompton, and laid out the greater number of seats, which still exist in the ancient style. Among these may be mentioned Blenheim, Cannons, Exton Park, and Bramley, in England, and Hatton-house, near Edinburgh.

As the 18th century advanced, the botanic garden at Chelsea and its curator, Phillip Miller, came into notice. A new æra of gardening may be dated from the publication of his Dictionary, and especially from the edition in which the Linnean system was adopted. Miller improved the culture of the vine, and the fig; and the Italian broccoli, and the pine-apple, were first made known through his work. The pine-apple was first grown by Sir Matthew Decker, at Richmond, in pots placed on shelves like greenhouse plants; but was subsequently found to succeed better in bottom heat and in pits, as it is still grown in Holland.

Horticulture made astonishing progress from the time of Miller. The general introduction of forcing-houses gave it a new feature. There were green-houses in England in the beginning of the 17th century; but no structures roofed with glass and heated by fire till the commencement of the 18th. The skill and attention requisite to bring forward the fruits, &c. grown in these buildings became a powerful stimulus to practical gardeners, who vied with one another in the earliness and excellence of their productions. This circumstance, together with the general diffusion of botanical knowledge, and the great number of foreign plants annually introduced, and which gradually found their way from the metropolis to the remotest provinces, rendered it necessary for gardeners to scrutinize into the native habits of plants, in order to determine their mode of culture, and thus a spirit of improvement on scientific principles was raised up, and matured. The culture of the pineapple and the grape was carried to great perfection between the years 1760 and 1790 at Welbeck, in Nottinghamshire, by Speechley, who introduced several new sorts of both fruits, and contributed

buted by his writings to spread a knowledge of their culture. Every walled garden had now its vinery and peach-house, and many had stoves for pines. New varieties of the hardy fruits, as the apple, pear, cherry, &c. were raised from seed; and almost all the culinary vegetables were improved, either by British gardeners, or by importing the best sorts from Flanders and Holland, countries still pre-eminent in horticulture.

No branch of gardening made much progress in Scotland till within the last fifty years; for the progress of every art is relative to the influx of wealth, and Scotland, till lately, has been more remarkable for producing excellent operative gardeners for other countries, than for employing them in her own. The first Scottish work on gardening was published in the early part of last century, by J. Reid. Subsequently appeared the 'Scots Gardener's Director,' an original work, by a great enthusiast in gardening, James Justice, of Crichton, near Edinburgh. Dr. Gibson published a valuable tract on fruit trees; and in 1774, Keil produced a treatise on peach-trees; the practical works of the late Walter Nicol are so recent as to be sufficiently well known.

Crichton garden was accounted the richest in Scotland, during the life of the proprietor, who laid out great sums on it; subsequently, (i. e. from 1760 to 1785) that of Moredun, near Edinburgh, claimed the priority, and may be considered as the first in that country in which forcing was carried to any degree of perfec tion. The late Baron Moncrief, its proprietor, used to boast that 'from his own ground, within a few miles of Edinburgh, he could, by the aid of glass, coals, and a good gardener, match any country in Europe, in peaches, grapes, pines, and every other fine fruit, excepting apples and pears;' these he acknowledged were grown better in the open air in England and the north of France. Dr. Duncan informs us that on the 10th of June, (1817) a bunch of Hamburgh grapes was presented to the Caledonian Horticultural Society, weighing four pounds, the berries beautiful and large.' At this early season, it is added, such grapes could not be obtained at any price, either in France, Spain, or Italy. This and many other circumstances might be adduced to prove the rapid progress which this science has made in Scotland within a very short period.

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In Horticulture Ireland is left at an immense distance. The first stimulus given to territorial improvement there, was by Cromwell's soldiers, and chiefly by Walter Blythe, the author of a wellknown and very ingenious work, The Improver Improved. From Cromwell's time things remained nearly stationary till the establishment of the Dublin Society in 1749, when planting began to be attended to; previously to the Union, however, little was done. No original work on horticulture has yet appeared; and, till within the

last

last ten years, there were not, as we are well assured, above ten gardens in that kingdom which had forcing-houses. Now, however, improvement of every kind is rapidly taking place.

Having brought down this slight sketch of the history of horticulture in Britain, to the period when the two Horticultural Societies took their rise, we shall pause for a moment to compare it with that of other countries.

Gardening is, perhaps, more than any other art, under the influence of geographical circumstances. It is true, nature has adapted a variety of vegetables to every climate; and those which are the most useful to man, as the farinaceous grains, will be found attending him almost in every country where he has fixed his habitation. Still there are some climates eminently fitted for culinary vegetables, and others for fruits, and none in which the best sorts of both can at once be brought to a high degree of perfection in the open air. The finest fruits are natives of Syria, Persia, and the Indies; but the most succulent and best-flavoured legumes are produced in the low moist climates of Holland and Britain. Excepting in Lombardy, no potherbs of tolerable quality are raised in Italy. The broccoli alone of Rome is fit to compare with that of England; their turnips, carrots, parsnips, radishes, are small, bitter, and hard; their celery stringy, and even their kidney beans dry and tough, as they are also in their native climate, India. Gourds, melons, and tomatos, are almost the only culinary productions in which they excel in the south of Italy; their cucumbers are far inferior to those of our close hot-beds.

In Lombardy, the climate is more temperate, the great tract of country low, very generally irrigated, and the air, in consequence, moist. Herbaceous vegetables are there grown to much greater perfection; and on the rising grounds the peach, apple, pear, cherry, plum, vine, fig, olive, &c. are excellent. In most places the lemon and orange require shelter during winter; but in some spots they grow in the open air, as at Genoa, and bring their fruit to a considerable degree of perfection. Lombardy, therefore, enjoys a climate which, though less favourable for fruits than that of Rome and Naples, and for leaves and roots than that of Holland, we consider, upon the whole, the best adapted, on the continent, for both branches of horticulture.

Drs. Pouqueville and Holland bear testimony to the striking inferiority of culinary vegetables in, European Turkey, and to the great excellence of the fruits. Every one who has crossed a mule in Spain, knows that, excepting among foreign merchants at the sea-ports, there are few other vegetables to be obtained than garlic, onions and gourds; the fruits, however, especially the grape, the fig and the orange, are delicious.

In

In the south of France there are few culinary roots or leaves cultivated. The gourd and the Indian wheat are almost the only vegetables of the cottager, who is but in few instances acquainted with, or reconciled to, the potatoe. In the middle districts, the kidneybean is the chief plant; but the market of Paris is tolerably supplied, especially with salading, spinach, sorel and pease. Asparagus and artichokes, however, are brought to a higher degree of perfection there than in Italy. The north of France excels in the apple and pear, the south in the grape and fig, which, with the pomegranate, are naturalized in Languedoc. The olive prospers between Marseilles and Nice. The orange bears abundantly in the open air at Toulon and Hieres. The almond is much grown about Lyons. Montreuil, near Paris, is noted for the peach, Argenteuil for the fig, Fontainebleau for the culture of table grapes, and Tours for the cherry and plum. The fruit shops of Paris are abundantly supplied with these in their respective seasons; but none of them are forced, (with some imperfect exceptions for the royal family,) and the pine-apple is only cultivated by three or four individuals in France. It is generally believed that the air or climate of the country is unfavourable to this fruit. The late Duke of Orleans (Egalité), to give it a fair trial, procured from his friend, the Earl of Egremont, a pine stove furnished with plants, together with the frames, bricks, flues, bark-pots, plants, and even the gardener, Blaikey. After repeated trials on different estates of the Duke, near Paris, and of a marine situation near Montpelier, which all ended in disappointment, the attempt was finally given up.

Germany is more favourable to the growth of leaves and roots than France, but less so to that of fruits. Hamburgh is better supplied with the former, and Vienna with the latter, than any other cities of the north. The grape, apple and pear thrive on the north bank of the Rhine; but only the two latter on the Elbe. One of the most northerly vineyards in Germany was planted by the late Earl of Findlater at his chateau near Dresden, where he had condemned himself to a sort of voluntary exile. There are few places where the fig will produce fruit in the open air in Germany; the mulberry is raised as far north as Frankfort on the Oder for the leaves, but must be trained against a wall, both at Berlin and Dresden, in order to ripen its fruit. The apricot and the almond bear, as standards, between Vienna and Presburg; but the peach ripens its fruit no where in Germany excepting where trained on walls. The pine-apple was first cultivated by Baron Munchausen (not the great traveller) at Schwobber, near Hame

This person is still alive, residing in a very agreeable villa, his own property, in the neighbourhood of St. Germains, and practising occasionally as an Ingénieur des Jardins Anglois,

lin, in Westphalia; and, soon afterwards, by Dr. Kaltschmidt in Breslaw, who, in 1702, sent some fruit to the imperial court, at a time when they were hardly known in Britain. This fruit is now grown but in very few places in the empire. The prime patron of horticulture in Germany was Frederick the Great, who raised the pine-apple, grape and peach in abundance at Potsdam.

The climate of the greater part of Russia and Poland is unfavourable both to the culture of perennial leaves and fruits; but it is much less so than could be imagined to the growth of annual roots and farinaceous grains. Gardening can only be said to be practised in those countries round Moscow, Petersburg and Warsaw, and that chiefly under glass for the imperial family and a few of the first nobility. The gardeners are almost entirely Germans and Englishmen, and are remarkable for the quantity of pine-apples which they produce.

The climate of Sweden is still more adverse to gardening than that 1of Russia; but, from its being a more civilized country, horticulture is more generally practised. The potatoe is very generally cultivated, which is not the case in Russia; but forcing houses are seldom to be met with.

Denmark is more favourable to all the branches of gardening than its situation would lead us to expect. The pasture is more close and verdant in Holstein than in most parts of the continent, and this country in consequence admits of a nearer approach to Britain in landscape gardening than any other in Europe. Few fruits ripen well in the open air; but roots and leaves are brought to a considerable degree of perfection, and the apple, pear and cherry, and, in some places, even the apricot and peach, are ripened against walls, their blossoms being retarded in spring, or protected by glass. It remains only to speak of the climate of Holland and Flanders, countries in which horticulture and ornamental gardening have long been in a high degree of perfection, and which, at an early period, took the lead in every branch of husbandry. The cause of this has never been satisfactorily explained. Harte conjectures, that the necessities arising from the original barrenness of the soil, (that of Flanders having been formerly like what Arthur Young describes great part of Norfolk to have been about a century ago,) and a degree of liberty, arising in some measure from the remoteness of its situation from the court, may have contributed to general improvement. All that we know from history, and particularly from Gesner, (the German historian of horticulture,) is, that a taste for plants existed among the Dutch, even previously to the time of the crusades. Lobel, in the preface to his Histoire des Plantes (1576) states that, under the Dukes of Burgundy, they brought home plants from the Levant and the two Indies; that exotics were more cultivated there

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