SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 20^ 



ground was so knotty that the gardener was amazed to see it, 

 and as easy had it been, if I had not been, to make a shaft of 

 a cammock ^ as a garden of that croft. "t The ordinary mole- 

 catchers were paid by the number of moles they caught,. 

 *' usually i2d. a dozen for all the olde moles they catch, and 

 6d. a dozen for younge ones. Now as for those who send 

 purposely for a mole-catcher to gette a single mole in a 

 howse, garden or the like, they will seldom take lesse than 

 2d. and sometimes 3d. for her if they gette her, because they 

 have payment onely for those they catch and if they misse 

 the lose is theires.":]: The farmer, Henry Best, in the East 

 Riding of Yorkshire, who made these notes, has also left the 

 account of what he paid himself to the mole-catchers. In 

 " 1628, April 28, paid to John Pearson for killing monies in 

 the carre one and a half dozen olde ones is^d., two dozen 

 young ones 6d.," and so on. Several curious recipes for 

 killing moles are found in old gardening books. Sharrock 

 gives the following "Remedies against Moles" §: — "By watering 

 moles are drowned or driven up into so narrow a compass 

 that they may be easily taken. Mr. Blith relates one 

 spring, about March, a mole-catcher and his boy in about ten 

 dayes time, in a ground of go acres, took 3 bus[hels] old and 

 young. Among Mr. Speed's notes there are these receipts : 

 Take red herrings and cutting them in pieces burn the 

 pieces on the molehihs, or you may put garlicke or leeks 

 in the mouths of their Hill, and the moles will leave the 

 ground. I have not tryed these ways, and therefore refer 

 the reader to his own tryal, belief or doubt." 



For the destruction of other garden pests many equally 

 fanciful remedies were in vogue. Lawson recommends to pick 

 off all caterpillars with the hand, "and tread them under foot." 

 "I like nothing of smoake among my trees," he says; "unnaturall 

 heates are nothing good for naturall trees." He enumerates the 

 things necessary for keeping the garden free from " beasts," 



* ^ a crooked tree. 



t Dramatic and Poetical Works of R. Greene and G. Peele. By Dyce, 1861. 



X Rural Economy in Yorkshire, 1641. Surtees Society, 1857. 



§ Animprovement in the Art of Gardening. By Robert Sharrock, 3rd ¥A., 1694. 



14 



