30 AGRICULTURE IN THE 



densed in his own treatise. Most of his information un- 

 doubtedly came from Holland. He divides an orchard into 

 four parts, one for apples, one for pears, one for quinces and 

 chestnuts, one for medlars and services. On the south aspect 

 of the wall must be planted apricots, verdochios, peach and 

 damask plums ; on the western aspect the white muscadine 

 grape, the peascod plum, and the imperial plum ; on the east 

 aspect grafted cherries and olive trees ; and on the north aspect 

 the almond and fig. A variety of other fruit-trees are named, 

 but one cannot help thinking that Markham has imagined 

 that some trees would bear fruit in England which no modern 

 experience has attempted. The writer then describes the 

 nursery of plants, the art of grafting, and notes the principal 

 diseases of trees. 



Markham devotes a considerable space to the cultivation of 

 hops, mentioning that a considerable traffic was carried on in 

 this commodity, between England on the one hand, and 

 France and Flanders on the other. But the greater part of 

 what he says is identical with what had been stated before by 

 Reynold Scot 1 . He says however that every hill should grow 

 1\ Ibs. of hops, enough for a quarter of malt ; that there may 

 be a thousand such hills to an acre, and that a labourer is 

 needed to every 2 \ acres ; and that the average price of a cwt. 

 of hops is four nobles, so that he infers a profit in ordinary 

 years at the rate of 6 a rood. Unluckily Markham does not 

 inform us in what counties hops were principally grown. 



My author proceeds to discuss the form of pleasure, and 

 particularly of knotted gardens. But my reader will be more 

 interested in the conduct of the kitchen garden, because it is 

 from garden cultivation in the first instance that the root 

 cultivation of the farmer has proceeded. The potherbs of the 

 seventeenth century gardener were endive and succory, bleet 

 white and red, beet, land cress, parsley, savory, thyme, French 

 mallow, chervil, dill, hyssop, mint, violets (whose leaves were 

 used for salad), basil, sweet marjoram, strawberry (the leaves 



1 See vol. iv. p. 57. 



