236 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



writing in 1587 on the plants of the Bible, says no 

 more than what later travellers have noticed, that 



' Thystles, briers, and brembles, which grow out of the 

 ground themselves, without planting or husbanding, yeelde in 

 a manner no kind of commodity for the use of man, but rather 

 detriment and annoyance both to man by their prickles, and 

 to graine both by their ill company and neighbourhood.' 



And so, having taken the palms and bamboos as types 

 of all that is most beautiful and useful in the vegetable 

 world, I will now take brambles and thistles as being 

 the proverbial types of uselessness and annoyance. 



But it is only as proverbial types drawn from Biblical 

 associations that brambles and thistles are thus at once 

 condemned, for as soon as we get away from Eastern 

 and Biblical associations the case is changed. To begin 

 with brambles. Without quoting many passages in 

 which ^aros and Rubus are mentioned, and never in 

 contempt, and without entering into the question how 

 far they are identical with our bramble, I will only 

 name one line in Virgil where he connects the bramble 

 with the delicate amomum — 



' Rubus et ferat asper amomum' (Ed. iii. 89); 



and one in Pliny — 



'Neither hath Nature produced brambles for nothing els 

 but to pricke and do hurt ; but such is her bounty that the 



