no PERIOD IV. 



peaches, or apricots. His vegetable garden might 

 yield cabbages, turnips, carrots, and celery (all deficient 

 in size, flavour, and variety), but no cauliflowers, 

 Brussels sprouts, parsley, lettuces, peas, beans, leeks, 

 onions, or spinach. The handsomest of his flowers 

 would be dog-roses, mallows, and primroses. 



Before Europe was sufficiently enlightened to care 

 about exact records valuable foreign plants had already 

 been introduced. Vines, apples, pears, cherries, and 

 plums, besides improved vegetables, such as the cauli- 

 flower, bean, garden-pea, and cucumber, had been 

 brought from temperate Asia or Egypt. Wheat and 

 barley, neither of them native to Europe, had to some 

 extent replaced rye and oats, which may have existed 

 naturally in those European countries which border on 

 Asia. Britain, while yet a Roman province, shared in 

 these benefits, and it is believed that the common elm, 

 besides certain fruit-trees and pot-herbs, have been 

 continuously grown in our island through all the 

 troubled ages which separate us from the Romano- 

 British times. Leek, garlic, and onion are ancient 

 acquisitions. To our Old-English forefathers garlic 

 was the spear-leek, distinguished by its long, narrow 

 leaf from the broad-leaved common leek, just as a 

 garfish was distinguished from other fishes by its long 

 body and pointed head ; onion was the enne- or ynne- 

 leek (onion-leek) ; the most important of the three was 

 probably that which retained the root-word without 

 prefix the leek proper. 



During many centuries, when the rights of small 

 proprietors were little respected and knowledge was 

 scanty, the religious houses were distinguished by the 

 diligence with which they tended their gardens. 

 Flowers, fruits, and simples were cultivated, and plants 



