THE FIG. 247 



where it lyrew; but shoots are springing up from the 

 root. This tree was doulitless one of the Convent 

 Garden; which, in the reig;n of Elizabeth, bounded 

 the Strand, on the north, extending from St. Martin's 

 Lane to Drury Lane — these two lanes being the only 

 approaches to the neighbouring village of St. Giles. 



The Pocock Fig Tree is one of the most celebrated 

 in this country, and was once supposed to have 

 been the first of the white Marseilles figs introduced 

 into England. The tradition is, that it was brought 

 from Aleppo by Dr. Pocock, the celebrated traveller, 

 and planted in the garden of the Regius Professor of 

 Hebrew at Christ Church, Oxford, in the year 1648. 

 An extract from a communication by Mr. William 

 Baxter, curator of the Botanical Garden at Oxford, 

 read before the Horticultural Society in 1819, con- 

 tains the latest history of this tree. It received con- 

 siderable damage from the fire that happened at Christ 

 Church on the 3rd of March, 1809: till that time, the 

 large trunk mentioned by Dr. John Sibthorpe, in Mar- 

 tyn's edition of Miller's Gardener's Dictionary, re- 

 mained. In order to preserve it fi-om the injuries of 

 the weather, this trunk had been covered with lead ; 

 but at the time of the fire the lead was stolen, and, 

 soon after, the trunk itself decayed, and was removed. 

 The tree in 1819 was in a very flourishing state. 

 There are some remains of the old trunk to be seen 

 a few inches above the surface of the ground. The 

 branches then growing were not more than eight or 

 ten years old ; but those in the middle of the tree 

 were twenty-one feet high. 



It is probable that standard fig-trees were formerly 

 much more common in this country than at present. 

 Bradley, an old writer on agriculture, mentions an 

 ancient fig-tree at Windsor, which grew in a gravel- 

 pit, and bore many bushels every year, without any 

 pains being bestowed upon it. 



