GROWTH OF A NEW ENGLAND. 45 



by the Crown. The land to them is a factory, 

 and not a sporting preserve. It is a national 

 trust, as much as the land of Denmark is to 

 the owners in that country, and it is a pleasure 

 to turn from a district where the rabbit-warren 

 and the pheasant preserve seem to be the 

 abiding interest, to a district where the 

 appearance of a single rabbit within an area 

 of 10,000 acres causes much perturbation of 

 mind to the tenant. 



JNIonks have generally been shrewd agri- 

 culturists, and when they built their Abbey 

 and made their high walled-in garden in the 

 vale of Evesham, they showed surely that an 

 intimate knowledge of Genesis did not deter 

 them from finding England's Garden of Eden. 

 Evesham is one of the earliest sites in 

 England, and owing to the presence of 

 certain salts in the soil it is found to be the 

 best asparagus ground in this country. Plums 

 too seem to grow there as they grow nowhere 

 else, particularly the Pershore plum. 



Probably the monks were the only gardeners 

 in Evesham when the Abbey was built. A 

 fruit-grower told me that his father re- 

 membered the time when only four carts 

 left the town weekly, laden with produce. 



