WHAT OTHERS SAY 443 



known in market, its size, beauty, flavor and early maturity will give it 

 an average market value of one to two cents more per pound than the 

 Concord, during its entire season, which laps upon that of the Concord 

 at least two weeks. 



W. I. CHAMBERLAIN. 

 Ames, Iowa. 



SCIENTIFIC. 



STUDIES IN OLD GARDENS. 



The convent garden of the earliest English monks, of which Ven- 

 erable Bede, the first historian of our race, tells us in his history, de- 

 serves to live in the memory of all English speaking gardeners. In the 

 days before the monastery became a place of lazy luxury and idleness, 

 its garden was a school of industry and of horticulture, and in it, we have 

 reason to believe, arose the names of most of our fruits and flowers. 

 The words pear, peach, lettuce, lily, peas, and perhaps others, are defi- 

 nitely ascribed by philologists to the Latin words for these objects in- 

 troduced by St. Augustine and other Roman missionaries who converted 

 the Saxons to Christianity. Moreover, an able English scholar has 

 shown that the majority of the English names on the earliest lists of 

 flowers arc but "Latin disguised by long familiarity and attrition." — e.g., 

 mallow, mint, poppy, rue, laurel, feverfew and rose. Mr. Earle has made 

 it probable that in the word "hip," as applied to the briar rose, we have 

 the survival of the name by which the flower was known before it was 

 called the rose. But he supposes the name "rose" and many other 

 Latin names for flowers to have been learned from the Latinized British 

 natives. We may, however, regard it at least as possible that they 

 were learned of the Latin speaking monks. In any case, the flowers of 



