Nothing fills so grand a place in the history of the gardening of antiquity, as the great hanging gardens of Babylon. A series of terraces supported by stone pillars, rising one above the other three hundred feet in height, and planted with rows of all manner of stately trees, shrubs and flowers, interspersed with seats, and watered and supplied with fountains from the Euphrates; all this was indeed a princely effort of the great king, to recall to his Median queen the beauties of her native country. The "Paradises" of the Persians seem not only to have had straight walks bordered with blossoming trees, and overhung with exquisite lines of roses and other odoriferous shrubs, but to have been interspersed with occasional thickets, and varied with fountains, prospect towers, and aviaries for singing birds.
