386. In Austria the best varieties of hardy fruit trees are said (Bright's Travels') to have been introduced from Holland, by Van der Schott, about the middle of the seven-teenth century; but many of them must have been in the imperial gardens long before this period, from the connection of Austria with the Netherlands; yet Mayer, in 1776, speaking of fruits, says, that 'the age of Schonbrunn will be for Franconia what that of Louis the Fourteenth was for France. ' The Rev. J. V. Sickler, in Saxe-Gotha, counsellor Diel, at Nassau-Dietz, and counsellor Ransleben, at Berlin, have established, within the last fifty years, fruit-tree nurseries, where all the best Dutch, French, and English varieties may be purchased. Diel and Ransleben prove the sorts, by fruiting the original specimens in pots in a greenhouse. Sickler has fruited an immense number of sorts in the open air, and published descriptions of them in Der Teutsche Obst Gartner; a work of which forty-eight volumes have already appeared. Since the peace of 1814, a society Der Landwirthschaftliches Vereins, &c., has been established for the promotion of agriculture and gardening at Vienna; and one of the imperial gardeners, M. F. Rauch, a young man of great talent and industry, has been sent to England, where he has spent several years in the study of the various departments of his art.
