My Garden in Spring 



chewed in the mouth without any maner of offence, and 

 is somewhat pleasant like a Strawberry: it is no great 

 bearer, but those it doth beare, are set at the toppes of the 

 stalks close together pleasant to behold, and fit for a 

 gentlewoman to weare on her arme etc as a raritie instead 

 of a flower." Johnson adds a paragraph about it in the 

 1633 edition of Gerard, and tells us its history thus : " Mr 

 John Tradescant hath told me that he was the first that 

 tooke notice of this Strawberry, and that in a woman's 

 garden at Plimouth, whose daughter had gathered and set 

 the roots in her garden in stead of the common Straw-berry : 

 but she finding the fruit not to answer her expectation, 

 intended to throw it away : which labour he spared her, 

 in taking it and bestowing it among the lovers of such 

 varieties, in whose gardens it is yet preserved." Then 

 Marret in his Pinax published in 1667, declares he found 

 it growing in woods in Hyde Park and Hampstead. Ray 

 mentions that it was in cultivation in the Cambridge 

 Garden for many years, and then it disappeared so entirely 

 that Dr. Hogg, as quoted by Dr. Masters, wrote of it as a 

 " botanical Dodo," saying that " though a century and a 

 half have passed since there was any evidence of its exis- 

 tence, it serves still as an illustration for students in 

 morphology of one of those strange abnormal structures 

 with which the vegetable kingdom abounds." In 1766 

 M. Duchesne informed the world of the generosity of 

 M. Monti of Bologna, who divided with him a dried 

 specimen in his herbarium. Some time after the publi- 

 cation of his Vegetable Teratology, from which I have quoted 

 these facts, Dr. Masters came across his botanical Dodo 

 alive and happy in Canon Ellacombe's garden, and carried 

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