42 GARDEN-CRAFT, 



manuscripts, and in each case allowance must be 

 made for the fluent fancy of the artist. Moreover, 

 early notices of gardens deal mostly with the orchard, 

 or the vegetable or herb garden, where flowers grown 

 for ornament occur in the borders of the ground. 



It is natural to ascribe the first rudiments of hor- 

 ticultural science in this country to the Romans ; 

 and with the classic pastorals, or Pliny the Younger's 

 Letter to Apollinaris before us, in which an elabo- 

 rate garden is minutely and enthusiastically described, 

 we need no further assurance of the fitness of the 

 Roman to impart skilled knowledge in all branches 

 of the science. 



Loudon, in his noble "Arboretum et fruticetum 

 Britannicum," enters at large into the question of 

 what trees and shrubs are indigenous to Britain, and 

 gives the probable dates of the introduction of such 

 as are not native to this country. According to 

 Whitaker, whose authority Loudon adopts, it would 

 appear that the Romans brought us the plane, the 

 box, the elm, the poplar, and the chestnut. (The 

 lime, he adds, was not generally planted here till 

 after the time of Le Notre : it was used extensively 

 in avenues planted here in the reign of Charles the 

 Second.) Of fruit trees, the Roman gave us the 

 pear, the fig, the damson, cherry, peach, apricot, and 

 quince. The aboriginal trees known to our first 

 ancestors are the birch, alder, oak, wild or Scotch 

 pine, mountain-ash or rowan-tree, the juniper, elder, 

 sweet-gale, dog-rose, heath, St John's wort, and the 

 mistletoe. 



