320 MINOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS. 



VERJUICE. The expressed juice of crabs, clarified and care- 

 fully kept, was a favourite ingredient in the cookery of our 

 ancestors, and has perhaps been abandoned unwisely in our 

 days. It was manufactured in most households, and if 

 the servants did not gather enough, crabs were occasionally 

 bought. So was also verjuice. A continuous return of this 

 article by the gallon is supplied from the account books of 

 Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1593 to 1626, after which 

 it is no longer discriminated. At first it is always %d. a 

 gallon, then nearly as regularly ic*/., only two years, 1611 and 

 1625, paying is. In 1626 it is yd. There are five entries 

 of crabs by the quarter, all in the early years, at prices 

 varying from is. 4d. to 4^. In short, the cost was the labour 

 of collection, and crabs were probably gathered by children and 

 women from the hedge-rows and woods, for the crab was 

 a favourite tree for the hedge, being reckoned next to the 

 whitethorn. 



QUICKSETS. These are extensively bought for planting 

 hedges, and were probably obtained from the woods. There 

 is a very low rate at Worksop in 1583, is. the thousand. But 

 during the first twenty years quickset seedlings are 2s. 6d. 

 the thousand, or $d. the hundred ; and at this rate they are 

 bought at Eton, Oxford, and Cambridge. They rise how- 

 ever from this price to 4^., $d. and 6d. the hundred, and 

 even 7^., or $s. and $s. lod. the thousand. On one occasion, 

 S. John's College, Cambridge, buys exceptionally large quick- 

 sets at zos. 9</. the hundred. It is however singular that 

 at Harting in Sussex, the seat of the Caryls, quicksets 

 are purchased as late as 1696 and 1697 at id. and 3^. the 

 hundred. 



GARDEN-FRUITS. It was the reproach of the English that 

 having made little or no progress in the art of gardening or 

 fruit culture, they were obliged to import their best fruit and 

 vegetables from Holland, and it was to remove this reproach 

 that Simon Hartlib wrote his Legacy. The facts contained 

 in my entries confirm this statement, and show how gradually 



