949. The religion of a people is calculated to have some effect on their gardening. Those religions whose offices are accompanied by splendour and show, and which have numerous fetes and spectacles, will be favourable to the culture of flowers and plants of ornament; and those which forbid, at certain seasons, the use of animal food, will in some degree encourage the production of fruits and culinary vegetables. Where those alternating days of rest, of such antiquity in society, and so conducive to the comfort of the labouring classes (Graham's Sabbath, pref.), are to be spent wholly or partly in recreative enjoyments, encouragement will be given to public gardens of different kinds; but where they are to be spent in a devotion founded in fear, and consequently gloomy and austere in its offices, such a religion cannot be said to encourage gardening.
