72 THE BOX. 



In the East it attains a much larger size than with us, 

 and is mentioned in the sacred volume in conjunction with 

 several of the largest forest trees : "I will set in the desert 

 the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together : that 

 they may see, and know, and consider, and understand 

 together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the 

 Holy One of Israel hath created it" (Isaiah xli. 19, 20). 



As a cultivated tree it was formerly much valued by 

 practitioners of the topiary art, 1 for which it is better 

 adapted than any other tree, owing to the closeness of its 

 growth and its suffering no injury from the frequent use 

 of the shears. 



It is a slow grower, attains a great age, and will thrive in 

 most soils, and at almost any temperature. It was so 

 trained as to represent architectural devices, figures of men 

 and animals, arcades, and various other forms. The 

 method adopted in order to produce these various sem- 

 blances was to inclose the tree in a light frame of wicker 

 work, constructed in the shape required, and to cut back 

 the shoots which protruded till a solid mass of verdure was 

 produced. The wickerwork was then removed, and the 

 Box-tree compelled to retain its grotesque shape by fre- 

 quent use of the shears or knife. Even now we may 

 occasionally fall in with a vegetable globe or some other 

 such absurdity : but gardeners nowadays, instead of 

 wasting their time in distorting Nature, employ it more 

 profitably in assisting her to produce new varieties, of 



' ' l Topiary work, or, the art of cutting the Box and other trees into 

 artificial forms, was carried to such an extent among the Romans, 

 that both Pliny and Vitruvius use the word topiarius to denote the 

 art of the gardener : a proof that, as far as ornament was concerned, 

 the art of clipping was considered the highest accomplishment that 

 could be possessed by a gardener among the ancient Romans. This 

 appears to have been equally the case in Europe in modern times ; 

 gardeners, even so late as the time of the Commonwealth, being 

 called by Commenius ' pleachers ' (from the old word pleach, ' to 

 interweave '). About the middle of the seventeenth century the 

 taste for verdant sculpture was at its height in England ; and, about 

 the beginning of the eighteenth, it afforded a subject for raillery for 

 the wits of the day, soon afterwards beginning to decline. " London. 



