The companion for the orchard. An historical and botanical account of the fruits known in Great Britain / By Henry Phillips.

  • Phillips, Henry, 1775-1838.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The companion for the orchard. An historical and botanical account of the fruits known in Great Britain / By Henry Phillips. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    pered. Our intercourse with distant nations having en¬ lightened the mind and refined the taste, men began to turn their attention to an employment, the most rational, because the most beneficial both to mind and body, as it is the most ancient and the most honourable. *^The Lord took the man, and put him into the garden, to dress it, and to keep it,”—not to behold it only, and to revel in the enjoyment of the fruits, which unless earned by toil would cloy; but to rear the tender plant, and prop the beauteous blossom ; to lend a staff to the gadding pea, or turn and fertilize the barren mould; these w^ere the occupations that endeared man to earth, brought new relish to each fruit, and gave that humane delight which so greatly contributes to banish spleen and sullen sadness from the terrestrial globe. Amongst civilized nations in ancient times, we find the greatest and wisest monarchs both studied and honoured this useful pursuit. Of Solomon it is vrritten, that “ he made cedars to be as sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundanceand that he wrote a history of all the plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss growing on the wail.^ The Chinese have ever been celebrated for their atten¬ tion to horticultural pursuits. Among the peasants in some parts of China, it is the custom to reward those whose gardens or fields are cultivated with the greatest care, by making them Mandarins of their class. It is related by the historians of China, that the Emperor Xi- Hoam-Ti, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign f213 years B. C.) ordered all the books in his dominions to be burnt, except those on Physic, Agriculture, and Astrology, which shews that despotism itself regarded this art as sacred. * This is the literal meaning of the passage, and not hyssop.