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The Romans, perhaps.'more than any other people, have enriched our fields. It is 

 generally believed that to them we owe the introduction of the elm tree, which now 

 forms so striking a feature in the landscapes of this country. It is most probable, too, 

 that the Romans introduced the box tree, and it is certain that they brought the 

 cherry. Lucullus carried it from Asia Minor to Rome, and history states that it had 

 renched Britain before A. D. 150. "All our wild cherries have been propagated by the 

 birds from the cultivated.,oue, and the bird cherries of the woods are simply degene- 

 rated cherries from the garden." The Roman nettle haunts yet some of the ruined 

 Roman stations, though not in Uertfordshire, and perhaps the coarse pot-herb, 

 Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatruni), generally found near or upon their earthworks, was 

 used either by the soldiers of Rome or their auxiliary German bands. It is quite 

 possible, also, that the Romans first introduced the Spanish chestnut, and the walnut 

 tree, of which we know they were very fond, and the yew tree, if this last really is an 

 Introduction ; for few botanists who know its frequency in the hanging woods on the 

 banks of the Wye, in Surrey, and many other places, would regard it in the character 

 of an alien. 



The Danes are commemorated in the Danewort or Danesblood (Sanibucus ebulusj, 

 which was said, curiously enough, to spring up wherever their blosd was spilt. Even 

 AVorsaae a grave historian, in his "History of the Danes in Britain," relates that 

 after the siege of Warwick by King Canute an enormous quantity of iiambucus ebulus 

 sprang up around that town, and was commonly said to have grown from the blood 

 of the Danes. Whatever we may think of the legend, we may perhaps take the fact, that 

 this shrub was brought to Britain in the train of the Danes. 



The Saxons brought us the Beech tree, at all times graceful and beautiful, but in 

 autumn, with its rich and varied tints, perhaps the most beautiful tree we have. They 

 are said to have brought it for its mast to feed their enormous herds of swine They 

 called it boc or buch, and so the sailed flesh, flavoured by the buck or beech mast, was 

 said to be buchon, now corrupted to bacon. Buckinghamshire took its name from the 

 beech woods planted there, and so with the Buckhursts, Buckholts, &c., &c. 



The Normans, after their sword had won the country, introduced a better kind 

 of apple, for the Saxons appear only to have known the crab that 



" Hissed in their bowls when roasted 1" 

 And they probably added greatly to the number of ordinary British plants, by the foun- 

 dation of numerous Monasteries ard Nunneries. From the gardens attached to these 

 institutions many plants might readily wander through the country. The monks, 

 hermits, and nuns in the early ages of Christianity, "bound, in many instances, by 

 their vows to live on vegetable diet, a garden was indispensable to their purpose, while 

 the calls of the peasantry on their medical skill required the cultivation of such as would 

 furnish them with decoctions and balms for the protean forms of disease, as then 

 understood and encountered. But, independent of this, amusement was required to 

 unbend the mind tired with the sameness of austerity ; and nothing could surely be 

 more innocent than the cultivation of that love for flowers which all mankind possess, 

 bent as it was presumed to pious uses, by connecting the names of the Virgin and saints, 

 and tLe recurrence of festivals, with the appearance of the varied blossoms of the year. 

 In the old oratory gardens, were a host of disease-destroying plants, which as wound- 

 worts, heal-alls, or loose-strifes, effected wonders in their day, and were balm^ for ill 

 possible ailments, though now abandoned and neglected. Even in later times, certain 

 plants have obtained celebrity for some fancied power or property, and so been spread 

 about. Such, according to Willdeuow, has been the case with the common Thorn-apple 



