2 THE SMALL FRUITS OF NEW YORK 



has been cultivated 300 years or 3000 years. If the red raspberry, was 

 brought into Greek gardens 3000 years ago, as were many frviits and vege- 

 tables, and has evolved no further from the wild type than now appears, it 

 does not promise much for the future. If, on the other hand, its improve- 

 ment over the wild type has come about in the last two or three centuries, 

 much may be expected in its continued evolution. Fortunately, the main 

 facts as to the history of this fruit are easily obtainable and may be set 

 forth in a few brief paragraphs, so that one may quickly measure progress 

 in the domestication of the raspberry. 



Greek and Roman agricvdtural writers who lived before the Christian 

 era do not mention the raspberry, though they have much to say about 

 the tree fruits and the grape. Pliny, at the beginning of the Christian era, 

 writes of wild raspberries as having come from Moimt Ida, a statement, no 

 doubt, which led Linnaeus to give the plant its botanical name. Palladius, 

 a Roman writer of the fourth century, is credited with naming the rasp- 

 berry as one of the garden plants of his time, but other Roman writers of 

 the early Christian era, as Virgil and Columella, say nothing of it. Charle- 

 magne, King of the Franks, at the beginning of the ninth century, left a 

 record of a long list of vegetables and fruits to be grown in his garden, but 

 the raspberry is not among them. The first list of English vegetables and 

 fniits, The Forme of Cury, published in 1391, does not enroll the raspberry. 



It is safe to put the date of the first record of cidtivated raspberries 

 as 1548 when Turner, the English herbalist, says of them " they growe in 

 certayne gardines in Englande." Nearly a century later, 161 8, William 

 Lawson, another English farm writer, in his A New Orchard and Garden 

 gives a prettj- picture of a garden in which raspberries and currants border 

 the paths. But it is not until 1629 that any writer on cultivated plants 

 more than mentions the raspberry as a garden plant. At the date given 

 Parkinson' published his Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris, the third 

 part of which is called The Orchard, and the first chapter of which is devoted 

 to the raspberry. All of this short chapter is of interest and is here repro 

 duced. To give the chapter its proper setting Parkinson's introduction to 

 The Orchard must also.be copied. 



" The Orchard 



" Containing all sorts of trees bearing fruit for mans use to eate, proper 

 and fit for to plant an Orchard in our climate and countrie: I bound it 



' Parkinson, John Par. Tcr. 557. 1629. 



