A QUAINT OLD BOOK ON HORTICULTURE. 



A QUAINT OLD BOOK ON HORTICULTURE. 



New Orchard and Garden ; or, the best way of Planting, 

 Grafting, and to make any Ground Good for a Rich Orchard : 

 Particularly in the North, and generally for the whole Kingdom 

 of England, as in Nature, Reason, Situation, and all Probabilitie, 

 may and doth appeare. With the Country Housewife's Garden 

 for Herbs of Common Use — their Virtues, Seasons, Profits, Orna- 

 ments, Varietie of Knots, Models for Trees, and Plots for the best 

 ordering of Grounds and Walkes. As, also, the Husbandry of 

 Bees, with their several Uses and Annoyances, all being the Ex- 

 perience of Forty-Eight Yeares'' Labour, and now the third time 

 Corrected, and much Enlarged. By William Lawson. Where- 

 unto is neivly added the Art of Propagating Plants, with the true ordering of all manner of 

 Fruits, in their Gathering, carrying Home, and Preservation. Printed at London, by 

 J. H., for Francis Williams, 1626. 



We beg the reader to observe the date of this quaint title-page of a thin quarto of fifty- 

 seven pages, which a valued friend (Dr. C. D. Meigs) has laid on our table as the greatest 

 curiosity of gardening literature still extant. Gerard's Historie of Plants was printed in 

 1597, and Evelyn's Sylva about fifty years after that of Lawson. Indeed, Lawson's was the 

 gardening book of England two hundred and thirty years since, when Charles the First was 

 on the throne. This rare copy is perfect in all its pages, quaint to the last degree in its 

 style and printing, and so very curious m all respects as to be a strong inducement to repro- 

 duce it for the benefit and amusement of the horticulturists of the present day. 



Let us see what are its contents. The title-page, in addition to its lengthened details, 

 contains a cut (given in our last number) rudely representing an orchard, with three men 

 at work. One is trimming a sucker that has sprung up near the root of a fruit-tree, with 

 a sickle ; another is digging a hole, with a trimmed tree lying beside him, ready to plant ; 

 the third has a spade inserted in the ground, and holds a young fruit-tree in his left hand, 

 ready to be inserted. Around the cut are the following mottoes : " Skill and paines bring 

 fruitfull gaines;" "Nemo sibi natus." The work is dedicated very gracefully to the "Right 

 Worshipful Sir Henry Belosses, Knight Baronet." The preface is very curious. Then fol- 

 lows a table of contents. Chapter L treats of "the best, surest, and readiest way to make 

 a good Orchard and Garden, and of the Gardener and his Wages." This functionary's 

 qualifications should be "religious, honest, skilfull, painfull," and declares "there is no 

 plague so infectious as popery and knavery." Concerning his skill, "he must not be a 

 scholist, to make show, or take in hand that which he cannot performe, especially in so 

 weighty a thing as an orchard, than the which there can be no humane thing more excel- 

 lent, either for pleasure or profit, as shall (God willing) be proved in the treatise following. 

 The gardener had not need be an idle or lazy lubber ; there will ever be something to doe. 

 W^eeds are always growing. The great mother of all living creatures, the earth, is full of 

 seed in her bowels, and any stirring gives them heat of sunne, and being laid neere day, 

 they grow," &c. 



As to the aphorisms of the present day, we find them mostly here either forcibly taught, 

 or alluded to in such a manner as to leave us almost ready to say " there is" little " new 

 the sun." In barren ground, you are to dig large holes, "and fill the same with fat, 

 and mellow earth, one whole foot higher than your soyle" * * "But be sure you 



