with the balm-gentle, the red, the purple, and the coronal anemone,[[1304]] the convolvulus, yellow, white, pale pink, and blue, together with our Lady’s-gloves, the flower of the Trinity, southernwood,[[1305]] and summer-savory,[[1306]] œnanthe,[[1307]] gith, the silver sage,[[1308]] Saint Mary’s thistle, and the amaranth, while high above all rose the dark pyramidal masses of the rhododendron,[[1309]] with its gigantic clusters of purple flowers.
How many of the lovely evergreens[[1310]] that abound in Greece were usually cultivated in a single garden, we possess no means of ascertaining, though all appear occasionally to have been called in to diversify the picture. The myrtle,[[1311]] whose deep blue berries were esteemed a delicacy,[[1312]] in some places rose into a tree, while elsewhere it was planted thick, and bent and fashioned into bowers,[[1313]] which, when sprinkled with its snowy blossoms, combined, perhaps, with those of the jasmine, the eglantine, and the yellow tufts of the broad-leaved philyrea,[[1314]] constituted some of the most beautiful objects in a Greek paradise. Thickets of the tamarisk,[[1315]] the strawberry-tree,[[1316]] the juniper, the box, the bay, the styrax, the andrachne, and the white-flowered laurel, in whose dark leaves the morning dew collects and glistens in the sun like so many tiny mirrors of burnished silver, varied the surface of the lawn, connecting the bowers, and the copses, and the flower beds, and the grassy slopes with those loftier piles of verdure, consisting of the pine tree, the smilax, the cedar, the carob, the maple,[[1317]] the ash, the elm tree, the platane,[[1318]] and the evergreen oak which here and there towered in the grounds. In many places the vine shot up among the ranges of elms or platanes, and stretched its long twisted arm from trunk to trunk, like so many festoons of intermingled leaves and tendrils, and massive clusters of golden or purple grapes.[[1319]] Alternating, perhaps, with the lovely favourite of Dionysos, the blue and yellow clematis[[1320]] suspended their living garlands around the stems, or along the boughs of the trees, in union or contrast with the dodder, or the honeysuckle, or the delicate and slender briony. And, if perchance a silver fir, with its bright yellow flowers,[[1321]] formed part of the group, large pendant clusters of mistletoe, the food sometimes of the labouring ox,[[1322]] might frequently be seen swinging thick among its branches. In some grounds was probably cultivated the quercus suber,[[1323]] or cork tree, with bark four or five inches thick, triennially stripped off,[[1324]] after which it grows again with renewed vigour. Occasionally, where streams and rivulets[[1325]] found their way through the grounds, the black and white poplar, the willow, and the lentiscus, with a variety of tufted reeds, crowded about the margin, here and there shading and concealing the waters.
Proceeding now into the orchard we find, that, instead of walls, it was, sometimes at least, if it touched on the confines of another man’s grounds, surrounded by hedges[[1326]] of black and white thorn, brambles, and barberry bushes, as at present[[1327]] by impenetrable fences of the Indian cactus.[[1328]] On the banks of these hedges, both inside and out, were found, peculiar tribes of plants and wild flowers, in some places enamelling the smooth close turf, elsewhere flourishing thickly in dank masses of verdure, or climbing upwards and interlacing themselves with the lofty and projecting thorns, such as the enchanter’s nightshade, the euphorbia, the iris tuberosa, the red-flowered valerian, the ground-ivy,[[1329]] the physalis somnifera, with its coral red seeds in their inflated calyces,[[1330]] the globularia, the creeping heliotrope, the penny-cress,[[1331]] the bright yellow scorpion-flower, and the broad-leaved cyclamen or our Lady’s-seal, with pink flower, light green leaf, veined with white and yellow beneath. The ancient Parthians surrounded their gardens with hedges of a fragrant, creeping shrub denominated philadelphos or love-brother,[[1332]] whose long suckers they interwove into a kind of network forming a sufficient protection against man and beast. In mountainous districts, where rain-floods were to be guarded against, the enclosures frequently consisted of walls of loose stones,[[1333]] as is still the case in Savoy on the edge of mountain torrents.
It was moreover the custom, both in Greece and Italy, to plant, on the boundary line of estates, rows of olives or other trees,[[1334]] which not only served to mark the limits of a man’s territory, but shed an air of beauty over the whole country. A proof of this practice prevailing in Attica, has with much ingenuity[[1335]] been brought forward from the “Frogs,” where Bacchos, addressing the poet Æschylus in the shades, observes “It will be all right provided your anger does not transport you beyond the olives.” It may likewise be remarked that in olive-grounds,[[1336]] the trees, excepting the sacred ones called moriæ, were always planted in straight lines, from twenty-five to thirty feet[[1337]] apart, because, in order to ripen the fruit,[[1338]] it is necessary that the wind should be able freely to play upon it from all sides. And further because they delight in a warm dry air like that of Libya, Cilicia,[[1339]] and Attica, the best olive-grounds were generally supposed to be those which occupied the rapid slopes of hills where the soil is naturally stony and light. The oil of the plains was commonly coarse and thick.
Among these olive grounds in summer, the song of the tettix[[1340]] is commonly heard; for this musical insect loves the olive, which, like the sant of the Arabian desert, yields but a thin and warm shade.[[1341]] The tettix, in fact, though never found in an unwooded country, as in the plains about Cyrene, equally avoids the dense shade of the woods.[[1342]] Here likewise[[1343]] are found the blackbird, the roller, and three distinct species of butcher-bird—the small grey, the ash-coloured, and the redheaded.
In an Attic orchard were most of the trees reared in England, together with many which will not stand the rigour of our climate.—The apple,[[1344]] cultivated with peculiar care in the environs of Delphi and Corinth; the pear,[[1345]] the cherry from Cerasos on the southern shore of the Black Sea,[[1346]] which sometimes grew to the height of nearly forty feet,[[1347]] the damascene,[[1348]] and the common plum. Along with these were likewise to be found the quince,[[1349]] the apricot, the peach, the nectarine, the walnut, the chestnut, the filbert, introduced from Pontos,[[1350]] the hazel nut, the medlar, and the mulberry, which, according to Menander, is the earliest fruit of the year.[[1351]] With these were intermingled the fig, white, purple, and red, the pomegranate,[[1352]] from the northern shores of Africa, the orange,[[1353]] still planted under artificial shelter at Lemnos, the citron, the lemon,[[1354]] the date-palm,[[1355]] the pistachio, the almond, the service, and the cornel-tree.
As these gardens were arranged with a view no less to pleasure than to profit, the trees were planted in lines, which, when sufficiently close, formed a series of umbrageous avenues, opening here into the lawn and there into the vineyard, which generally formed part of a Greek gentleman’s grounds. And such an orchard decked in its summer pride with foliage of emerald and fruit, ruddy, purple, and gold, the notes of the thrush, the nightingale,[[1356]] the tettix, with the “amorous thrill of the green-finch,”[[1357]] floating through its boughs, and the perfume of the agnus-castus, the myrtle, the rose, and the violet, wafting richly on all sides, was a very paradise.
Not unfrequently, common foot-paths traversed these orchards and vineyards, in which case the passers-by were customarily, if not by law, permitted to pick and eat the fruit,[[1358]] which seems also from the account of our Saviour to have been the practice in Judæa. The contrary is the case in modern Europe. In Burgundy and Switzerland, where pathways traverse vineyards, it is not uncommon to see the grapes smeared with something resembling white lime which children are assured is a deadly poison. This, while in the country, I regarded as a mere stratagem, intended to protect the vineyards from depredation, though there seems after all to be too much reason to believe the nefarious practice to exist in several localities. At least two children were recently killed at Foix by eating poisoned grapes on the way-side.
The Greeks placed much of their happiness in spots like those we have been describing, as may be inferred from such of their fabulous traditions,[[1359]] as relate to the garden of the Hesperides,[[1360]] the gardens of Midas, with their magnificent roses, and those of Alcinoös,[[1361]] which still shed their fragrance over the pages of the Odyssey. From the East, no doubt, they obtained, along with their noblest fruit-trees, the art of cultivating them, and, perhaps, that sacred tradition of the Garden of Eden, preserved in the Scriptures, formed the basis of many a Hellenic legend.[[1362]] The Syrians acquired much celebrity among the ancients for their knowledge of gardening, in which, according to modern travellers, they still excel. Of the manner of cultivating fruit-trees in the earlier ages very little is known. No doubt they soon discovered that some will thrive better in certain soils and situations than in others, and profited by the discovery; but the art of properly training and grafting trees is comparatively modern.[[1363]]
No mention of it occurs in the Pentateuch, though Moses there gives directions how to manage an orchard. For the first three years the blossoms were not to be suffered to ripen into fruit, and even in the fourth all that came was sacred to the Lord. From the fifth year, onward, they might do with it what they pleased. Of these regulations the intention was to prevent the early exhaustion of the trees. Homer, also, is silent on the practice of grafting, nor does any mention of it occur in the extant works of Hesiod, though Manilius[[1364]] refers to his poems in proof of the antiquity of the practice. By degrees, however, it got into use;[[1365]] and, in the age of Aristotle,[[1366]] was already common, as at present almost everywhere, save in Greece,[[1367]] since no fruit was esteemed excellent unless the tree had been grafted. Some few of the rules they observed in this process may be briefly noticed.[[1368]] Trees with a thick rind were grafted in the ordinary way, and sometimes by inserting the graft between the bark and the wood, which was called infoliation.[[1369]] Inoculation, also, or introducing the bud of one tree into the rind of another, was common among Greek gardeners.[[1370]] They were extremely particular in their choice of stocks.[[1371]] Thus the fig was grafted only on the platane[[1372]] and the mulberry; the mulberry on the chestnut,[[1373]] the beech, the apple, the terebinth, the wild pear, the elm, and the white poplar, (whence white mulberries;) the pear on the pomegranate, the quince, the mulberry, (whence red pears,) the almond, and the terebinth; apples[[1374]] on all sorts of wild pears and quinces, (whence the finest apples called by the Athenians Melimela,)[[1375]] on damascenes, also, and vice versâ, and on the platane, (whence red apples.)[[1376]] Another method of communicating a blush to this fruit was to plant rose-bushes round the root of the tree.[[1377]] The walnut was grafted on the strawberry-tree only;[[1378]] the pomegranate on the myrtle[[1379]] and the willow; the laurel on the cherry[[1380]] and the ash; the white peach on the damascene and the almond; the damascene on the wild pear, the quince, and the apple; chestnuts on the walnut, the beech, and the oak;[[1381]] the cherry on the terebinth, and the peach; the quince on the oxyacanthus; the myrtle on the willow; and the apricot on the damascene, and the Thasian almond-tree. The vine, also, was grafted on a cherry and a myrtle-stock, which produced, in the first case, grapes in spring,[[1382]] in the second, a mixed fruit, between the myrtle-berry and the grape.[[1383]] When the gardener desired to obtain black citrons, he inserted a citron-graft into an apple-stock, and, if red, into a mulberry-stock.