180 A HISTORY OF CARD EM XV IX EXULAXD. 



gardens as those of Elizabeth's reign, but by the middle of 

 the seventeenth century gardening was so much advanced 

 that the early years of Elizabeth were looked back upon 

 as a time of almost primitive horticulture. After a large 

 allowance is made for probable exaggeration, the fact remains 

 that the progress was sufficiently marked to be felt by the 

 writers of the time. Rea, writing in 1665, " to the Reader " 

 of his Flora Ceres and Pomona, says his reason for publishing 

 his work was that after " seriously considering Mr. Parkinson's 

 garden of pleasant flowers, and comparing my own collections 

 with what I there found (I) easily perceived his book to want 

 the addition of many noble things of newer choicing, and that a 

 multitude of those there set out, were by time grown stale, and 

 for unworthiness turned out of every good garden." Rea is 

 writing about the pleasure garden, but a correspondent of 

 Hartlib's, most likely Dymock, ten years earlier, writes in the 

 same strain of nursery gardening. 



Hartlib, a Pole by birth, settled in England early in Charles the 

 First's reign. He received a pension from Cromwell of 100 a 

 year, and did much to help the progress of agriculture. His Legacy 

 of Husbandry is a collection of letters on Agriculture probably by 

 Cressy Dymock, Robert Child, Gabriel Plats, and others. They 

 are in favour of increasing the number of nursery gardens and 

 orchards, and argue chiefly on the ground that gardening would 

 pay well, if properly managed. " Gardening though it be a 

 wonderfull improver of lands as it plainly appears by this, that 

 they give extraordinary rates for land . . . from 40 shillings per 

 acre to 9 pound and dig and howe, and dung their lands which 

 costeth very much . . . yet I know divers which by two or three 

 acres of land maintain themselves and family and imploy other 

 about their ground ; and therefore their ground must yield a 

 wonderful increase or else it could not pay charges ; yet I 

 suppose there are many deficiencies in this calling, because 

 it is but of a few years standing in England, and therefore 

 not deeply rooted nor well understood. About fifty years ago, 

 about which time ingenuities first began to flourish in England, 

 this art of gardening began to creep into England into 

 Sandwich and Surrey, Fulham, and other places." He goes 



