“Les orangers et les citronniers perfument l’air par la quantité prodigieuse des fleurs dont ils sont chargés, et qui s’épanouissent aux premières chaleurs.”—Della Rocca, Traité sur les Abeilles, t. i. p. 5. Footnote 1410: Originally of Crete. Pashley, i. 27. κοδύμαλον in the ancient dialect of the country. Athen. iii. 2. ----- But the thrifty people of Hellas seldom devoted the orchard-ground entirely to fruit-trees. The custom seems to have been to lay out the whole in beds and borders for the cultivation of vegetables, and to plant trees, at intervals, along the edges and at the corners. These beds, moreover, were often, as with us, edged with parsley and rue; whence the proverb,—“You have not proceeded beyond the rue,” for “You know nothing of the matter.”[1411] ----- Footnote 1411: Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 480. Geop. xii. 1. 2. ----- The rustics of antiquity, who put generally great faith in spells and talismans, possessed an extraordinary charm for ensuring unfailing fertility to their gardens; they buried an ass’s head deep in the middle of them, and sprinkled the ground with the juice of fenugreek and lotus.[1412] Somewhat greater efficacy, however, may be attributed to their laborious methods of manuring and irrigation.[1413] ----- Footnote 1412: Geop. xii. 6. Pallad. i. 35. 16. Footnote 1413: Lucian. Luc. siv. Asin. § 43. ----- The aspect of such a garden differed very little, except perhaps in luxuriance, from a similar plot of ground in Kent or Middlesex. Here you perceived beds of turnips, or cabbages, or onions; there, lettuces, or endive, or succory,[1414] in the process of blanching, or the delicate heads of asparagus, or broad-beans, or lentils, or peas, or kidney-beans, or artichokes. In the most sunny spots were ranges of boxes or baskets for forcing cucumbers.[1415] Near the brooks, where such existed, were patches of watermelons,[1416] the finest in the world; and here and there, clasping round the trunks of trees,[1417] and, suspending its huge leaves and spheres from among the branches, you might behold the gourd,[1418] as I have often seen it in the palm-groves of Nubia. It may be added, that the pumpkin, or common gourd, was eaten by the Greeks,[1419] as it is still in France and Asia Minor.[1420] ----- Footnote 1414: Geop. ii. 37. 40. Footnote 1415: These were covered with plates of the lapis specularis, and furnished with wheels, that they might the more easily be moved in and out from under cover. Colum. De Re Rust. xi. 3. p. 461: see also Castell, Villas of the Ancients, p. 4. Footnote 1416: