34 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART i. 
them were frequently paid by vassals to their lords, both in 
France and England. ‘The single rose paid as an acknowledg- 
ment was the diminutive representation of a bushel of roses; as 
a single peppercorn, which is still a reserved rent, is of a pound 
of peppercorns, a payment originally of some worth, descending 
‘by degrees to a mere formality. (Histoire de la Vie privée des 
Francois, ii. 221., and Cullum’s Hawsted, 117, 118.) 
The well-known story of the quarrel in the Temple Gardens, 
about 1450, which gave rise to the distinctions of the white and 
red rose in the wars of York and Lancaster, is in unison with 
the foregoing authorities. 
Towards the end of this century, parks for hunting became 
common in England, and bushes in gardens were clipped; but 
we have no evidence that in either case foreign trees or shrubs 
were made use of; unless, with Daines Barrington, we reckon 
the yew tree as such. The yew is mentioned in these times as 
subjected to the topiary operations of the gardener; and there 
appears little doubt that it was then reckoned one of the princi- ~ 
pal garden shrubs, and almost the only evergreen one. ‘The 
trees of the parks were, in all probability, wholly indigenous, 
and were left to propagate themselves, by shedding their seeds 
among rough herbage ; and the extent of surface they covered 
was allowed to be curtailed by deer and other animals, or to ex- 
tend itself, according to the abundance or scarcity of pasture. 
Of the foreign trees and shrubs of Scotland and Ireland, at 
this remote period, scarcely any thing is known. James I. is 
said to have been an amateur of the fine arts, and to have been 
fond of gardens, and of grafting fruit trees. James IIL had 
gardens in the neighbourhood of Stirling Castle; and the pear 
trees and. chestnuts, which are known to have existed in Scotland 
at that period, may have been, introduced from France, with 
which country Scotland was then, and for many years after- 
wards, on intimate terms, or by the Roman clergy. Dr. Walker 
mentions a sweet chestnut at Finhaven in Forfarshire, which, in 
1760, was conjectured to be upwards of 500 years old, and 
which is supposed to have been the oldest planted tree in Scot- 
land. (Essays, p. 29.) 
Still less is known of the introduction of foreign trees and 
shrubs into Ireland. The arbutus is thought by some to be 
indigenous ; and it is certain that in England, in the 15th cen- 
tury, it was called the Irish arbutus. By others, however, © 
it is said to have been introduced into Killarney by the monks 
of St. Finnian, who founded the abbey of that name on the 
banks of the lake, in the 6th century. 
