A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton.

  • John Barton
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the geography of plants / By John Barton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/120 (page 46)
    Babel, erected “in the plain of Shinar,” the concurring testimony of a multitude of passages scattered through both sacred and profane his- tory leaves no room to doubt that from this region, as from a centre, arts and civilization were carried to the other regions of the earth; and among the rest, probably, the art of horti- culture; for, though we are unacquainted with the original birth-place of most of our cultivated plants, history informs us that some of the most valuable productions of our gardens were first brought into Europe from that fruitful region between the Euphrates and the Indus, the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. The Wal- nut and the Peach we derive from Persia; the Vine and the Apricot from Armenia; the Sweet Cherry and the Spanish Chesnut from Lesser Asia; from Syria the Fig, the and the Mulberry. In the triumph of the Roman gene- ral Lucullus, after his return from the conquest of Pontus, about a hundred years before the Christian era, was exhibited a Cherry-tree, loaded with fruit, a sight till then unknown to the inhabitants of Italy *. From the same re- gions we derive the Hyacinth, the Tulip, the Iris, the Ranunculus, and some other of our garden flowers, most of which appear to have