142 
that steady perseverance in orchard culture will meet with a successful reward.” 
Among other suggestions he throws out one which we should like to see adopted, 
viz., that Agricultural Societies in the special fruit districts should hold annual 
exhibitions of fruit, and offer prizes for the best collections. He further suggests 
that the theory and practice of horticulture and fruit-growing might be intro- 
duced with great advantage into our elementary schools as a science subject. 
Many other points are touched upon to which our space will not allow us to refer. 
Too much praise cannot be given to the coloured portraits and the cuts, and the 
manner in which the whole work is compiled and turned out is of the best, and we 
must not omit to state that the drawings are from the pencils of Miss Edith Bull 
and Miss Alice B. Ellis. Mrs Stackhouse Acton (who executed the greater 
part of the drawings of Knight’s Pomona) has also contributed a drawing of 
the Eggleton Styre, on plate xxix. The editor is to be congratulated on the way in 
which he has performed his labours ; and there can be no doubt that the Hereford- 
shire Pomona, when complete, will form a standard work of the highest and most 
valuable description. We observe that the work will be completed in three more 
parts, to be published annually. 
ABOUT ORCHARDS. 
APppLes date at least as far back as Adam, and apple orchards are of some 
antiquity. Orchards of apple trees were planted by the Druids, no doubt with an 
eye to having mistletoe on them. Apples were brought, at an early period, to 
England from Normandy, and by the Normans, in large numbers, when they came 
here with the Conqueror and divided amongst them our fairest fields—for ‘‘apple 
gardens” are mentioned in Domesday Book. And for these gardens, or “‘orchards” 
as they were afterwards called, the county of Worcester soon took the lead; and 
in such high esteem were its orchards held at the close of the reign of Henry III., 
that in 1276—but four years from the date of the death of that king—apple-grafts 
were brought from there for the Royal garden at Westminster, as being the best 
that could then be procured. 
From that time the quality of the fruit improved, though slowly, until the 
reign of Henry VIII., when, as with grafts from Flanders, he got better trees, he 
ordered a quantity of them to be planted in Kent—some say in thirty villages— 
thus giving to that county a supremacy which it still retains. It has, however, 
been only by repeated propagation and graftings since that day that from the 
original stock of the apple—the wild crab tree—we get the splendid produce which 
is now to be had in our markets, of which the named varieties exceed two thousand, 
though in the time of the Romans only twenty-two sorts were known. 
Pear-grafts had been used in the previous reign, as records exist of their pur- 
chase by the Earl of Lincoln for his garden in Holborn, and by the Earl of War- 
wick for his orchards in Warwick Lane. The example of fruit planting thus set 
by the King was followed ere long by the people in what are now cider counties, 
Somerset, Devon, and Hereford; the latter ultimately becoming by the efforts of 
