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King Ethelstan u to the church of Christ in Canterbury," about 943, and in 

 Domesday Book it is mentioned as part of the archbishop's possessions. In 1'277, 

 the tenant not paying his rent, a record states the prices at which some of the produce 

 might be claimed: "a good goose Id., two good hens Id., five score of eggs Id." 

 Thomas Becket became archbishop, and, it is believed, planted figs brought from 

 Italy in the manor grounds of Tarring. The grand old White Marseilles tree in the 

 fig garden there is believed to be a descendant of one of those planted by Archbishop 

 Becket. The circumference of its stem just above the ground was 9 feet in 1872, 

 the stem separating into four main limbs, each nearly 3 feet in circumference, and the 

 branches covered a circle 40 feet in diameter. The tree was severely injured by 

 lightning in 1885. The fig garden at Tarring is three-quarters of an acre in extent, 

 contains about 100 trees, chiefly Brown Turkey, and these bear abundantly and 

 unfailingly. They rarely ripen a second crop, but did so in 1869. The crop ripens in 

 August, September, and October, and some of the trees bear twenty dozen figs. The 

 trees are allowed to grow naturally, and form a dense grove, nothing flourishing 

 beneath them. They have little pruning, the knife being only employed occasionally 

 to thin the branches. 



On the seaboard between Arundel and Worthing fig trees grown as standards are 

 numerous, healthy and productive. The soil is a rich alluvial loam, in many places four 

 feet deep before reaching the subsoil, which is more clayey than the surface soil. 

 Mr. Maher, who was gardener at Arundel Castle in 1818, mentions seven standard 

 trees in the garden there, six being of the Yiolette or Bordeaux variety, and the seventh 

 the White Marseilles. The last named was the largest, its stem being 6 feet 9 inches 

 in circumference at 2 feet above the surface, and the branches covering a circle 30 feet in 

 diameter. This variety is asserted to have been brought by the Phoenicians to Marseilles 

 about 600 years B.C. 



The fig (Ficus carica) is a native of the Mediterranean region, Syria, Eastern 

 Persia, to Afghanistan, and its cultivation is now general in all the warm, temperate 

 and sub-tropical regions of the earth. Dr. Bretschneider stated that it was cultivated 

 in China as early as the latter part of the fourteenth century. It may be as well to 

 state, for the benefit of the uninitiated, that the flowers of the fig tree are never appa- 

 rent to the eye, but are contained in those fruit-like bodies produced in the axils of the 

 leaves, and it is not until one of these is opened that the flowers are visible. What is 

 therefore termed the fruit is merely the receptacle become fleshy, and having assumed 



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