The Fig. 231 



at the present day, as the cherry-tree, in gardens in the 

 south of England, usually under the shelter of a wall; 

 still it is upon the extreme margin of the island, where 

 bathed by the English Channel, that the fig is seen, as 

 regards our own country, in its highest perfection. It 

 flourishes where the salt-laden atmosphere renders the 

 culture of other fruits precarious, and where, because of 

 the constant wind-beating, many other kinds of tree are 

 short-lived. This helps to explain the vast abundance of 

 the fig in the Greek Archipelago, and upon the shores 

 of the adjacent mainlands. Near Gosport there are figs 

 with trunks a foot in diameter, and that are probably the 

 oldest ligneous plants in the parish. In the neighbour- 

 hood of Worthing, Sussex, there are orchards of fig-trees, 

 grown as standards, all of large dimensions and great 

 age. In an orchard at Tarring, there are not fewer than 

 a hundred and twenty of these noble standards, the 

 produce of which, in good seasons, amounts to upwards 

 of two thousand dozen of fruit. A goodly sight, in sooth, 

 is that of the luscious, blue-black harvest hanging aloft 

 and around as one walks, as through a bower, below the 

 green roof made by the interlacing boughs. The trees at 

 Tarring are more than a century old ; they represent, in 

 their generation, orchards of much earlier date, and the 

 origin of which, according to tradition, was illustrious, the 

 primitive one dating from the time of Thomas a Becket. 

 Figs ripen well and plentifully also at Shoreham, Hastings, 

 Arundel, Margate, etc. In good seasons they lie upon 

 the ground, dropped from the tree, as thick as the apples 



