290 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



by Haworth, and the Proteae by Knight. The literature of 

 the orchard was also carried on by able hands. Speechly, 

 gardener- to the Duke of Portland, was the author of treatises 

 on the pine and the vine. He describes fifty of the varieties 

 of grapes grown at Welbeck, and mentions many of the fine 

 vines to be seen then in England.* The Black Hamburgh at 

 Valentine, in Essex, the parent of the Hampton Court one, 

 yielded so much fruit that the gardener frequently made 

 100 a year by selling the bunches. A vine growing at 

 Northallerton outside a house in 1789 covered 137 square yards 

 of wall.f He notices the vineyards near Bath, also those of 

 Sir William Basset, in Somerset, who made some hogsheads 

 of wine annually, and the Hon. Charles Hamilton, at Pain's 

 Hill (the famous landscape garden), made wine from "Burgundy" 

 and " black cluster " grapes, which sold for 75 6d to los the 

 bottle. Speechly himself grew a famous bunch of grapes at 

 Welbeck, in 1781, which weighed igi Ibs., and measured 

 20 in. in diameter. It was sent by the Duke of Portland to 

 the Marquess of Rockingham, carried by men, like the spies 

 returning from the promised land. Early in this century a vine 

 was brought from abroad and planted at Cannon Hall, Yorkshire, 

 which has since produced the well-known variety bearing that 

 name. Haynes wrote on the strawberry, gooseberry, and 

 raspberry. The strawberry was being much improved, and new 

 and large varieties produced by crossing the Virginian with the 

 Chilian, a species introduced early in the eighteenth century. 

 Old-fashioned gardens still retained the hautboy (Fragaria elatior) 

 now so rarely to be seen, having been entirely superseded by 

 the larger American species. 



A fine work on fruit trees, with well drawn and coloured 

 plates, by Brookshaw, Pomona Britannica, 1817, is princi- 

 pally taken from the fruit grown in the royal gardens at 

 Hampton Court. In this book, besides some varieties which 

 were then quite new, there are drawings of many of the old 



* Culture of the Vine. By Wm. Speechly. York, 1790. 

 f Dr. Fowler has told me that a very large vine covering a house wall 

 now exists in Northallerton, which may be the one here referred to. 



