Excerpt from American Gardens It must, however, be remembered that almost no trace is left of the famous gardens of antiquity. We know where many of them were situated, we know the dimensions and some of the details of others, but to gain an idea of their effect we must always draw largely on our imaginations. Contemporaneous litera ture aids us a little; 3 knowledge of the flora of the country helps us to finish off the picture; but the whole must in the end be, necessarily, a fabric of the imagination. The formal garden had its beginning many centuries ago. Owing to the admirable pictorial descriptions of the ancient Egyptians, we have a fairly accu rate idea of their gardens six thousand years back. Maspero, in his Dawn of Civilization, tells about a garden a description of which is carved on the tomb of Amten, an important Egyptian nobleman who lived four thousand years before Christ. He built, says Maspero, upon the remainder of the land a magnificent villa, of which he has considerately left us the description. The boundary wall formed a square 350 feet on each face, and consequently con tained a superficial area of square feet. A well-built dwelling-house, furnished with all the necessaries of life, was surrounded by ornamental and fruit bearing trees, - the common palm, the nebek, fig trees, and acacias, - severa1 ponds, neatly bordered with greenery, afforded a habitat for aquatic birds; trellised vines, according to custom, ran in front of the house, and two plots of ground planted with Vines in full bearing supplied the owner with wine every year. An interesting drawing, found in a Theban tomb some forty centuries old, shows, in a curiously combined plan, elevation, and section, a garden almost exactly like that described above. We can see not only all the parts mentioned in the earlier account, but can recognize certain trees and plants, see the birds swim ming on the ponds, and the vines climbing on the trellises. The whole was laid out with paths and terraces, so as to afford shade from the hot sun and shelter from the burning winds; and is an interesting example of the utilitarian and the decorative garden combined. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.