THE FIG. 237 



himself, as lie thought, from any chance of being deprived 

 of the promised treat, he appended a label to the twig on 

 which it grew, bearing the words " Dr. Kennicott's Fig." 

 A gownsman, however, who had observed the proceeding, 

 and who loved a joke even better than the doctor loved figs, 

 found the opportunity for making one quite irresistible, 

 and carrying oif both fruit and label, replaced the latter 

 with another, inscribed " A fig for Dr.Kennicott." Fruit 

 from this identical tree gained a prize as the best white 

 figs exhibited at the Oxfordshire Horticultural Society's 

 meeting in 1838. 



The fig-tree is generally trained against walls in this 

 country, for the sake of warmth and shelter, but in its 

 native clime assumes the standard form, and in the most 

 noted plantation of the kind in England, the " Fig Grar- 

 den" at Tarring, near Worthing, the trees are left to their 

 natural mode of growth. This fig orchard in 1821 con- 

 tained above 100 trees, about the size of large apple-trees, 

 and the proprietor informed an inquirer that he gathered 

 about 100 dozen a day during the season from August to 

 October. JSTor had these trees a less orthodox origin than 

 the clerically-connected celebrities already mentioned, for 

 the author of Pomarium Britannicum records that the 

 two oldest were raised in 1745 from some ancient trees 

 in an adjoining garden, near the ruins of the palace of 

 Thomas a Becket, and that tradition asserted these to- 

 have been brought from Italy, and planted there by the 

 saint himself a genealogy which reduces Cardinal Pole's 

 Lambeth plants, generally supposed to have been the 

 first in England, to the rank of mere parvenus. The glory 

 of Tarring, however, seems in a great measure to have 

 departed, for Bhind, describing the Fig G-arden in 1855, 

 not only reckons but 80 trees, only about 15 ft. high, but 

 adds that their origin is quite unknown even to the pro- 

 prietor, who " believed they had been planted about 50 

 years ago ;" so that the legend associating them with the 

 blessed Thomas would appear to have died out in its own 

 neighbourhood. 



The name of the fig varies but little in any language : 

 some derive the Latin Ficus fromfcecundus, on account of 



