COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

460 COSMOS.
ting effect of the light, when the tops of the palms, gently
moved by currents of air, come in contact as they wave to
find fro. So great is the charm produced by reality, although
the recollection of the artificial care bestowed on the plants
certainly exercises a disturbing influence. Perfect development
and freedom are inseparably connected with nature,
und in the eyes of the zealous and botanical traveller, the
dried plants of an herbarium, collected on the Cordilleras of
South America, or in the plains of India, are often more
precious than the aspect of the same species of plants within
an European hothouse. Cultivation blots out some of the
original characters of nature, and checks the free development
of the several parts of the exotic organisation.
The physiognomy and arrangement of plants and their
contrasted apposition must not be regarded as mere objects of
natural science, or incitements towards its cultivation ; for the
^attention devoted to the physiognomy of plants is likewise of
the greatest importance with reference to the art of landscape
gardening. I will not yield to the temptation here held out
to me of entering more fully into this subject, merely limiting
myself to a reference to the beginning of this section of the
present work, where as we found occasion to praise the more
^frequent manifestation of a profound sentiment of nature
noticed amongst nations of Semitic, Indian, and Iranian
descent, so also we find from history that the cultivation of
parks originated in Central and Southern Asia. Semiramis
caused gardens to be laid out at the foot of the Mountain
Bagistanos, which have been described by Diodorus,* and
whose fame induced Alexander, on his progress from Kelone
to the horse pastures of Nysaea, to deviate from the direct road.
The parks of the Persian kings were adorned with cypresses,
whose obelisk-like forms resembled the flame of fire, and were,
on that account, after the appearance of Zerduscht (Zoroaster),
first planted by Gushtasp around the sacred precincts of the
of Fin,. It is thus that the form of the tree itself has
Temple
* Diodor. ii. 13. He, however, ascribes to the celebrated gardens of
^Semiramis a circumference of only twelve stadia. The district near the
pass of Bagistanos is still called the " bow or circuit of the gardens"
Tauk-i-bostan, (Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Grossen, 1833, s. 553.,