136 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



of fruit then grown, the number of different sorts planted 

 together, and the growth of the olive in England. 1 The orchard, 

 he says, should be a square, divided into four quarters by alleys, 

 and in the first quarter should be apples of all sorts, in the 

 second pears and wardens of all sorts, in the third quinces and 

 chestnuts, in the fourth medlars and services. A wall is the 

 best fence, and on the north wall, ' against which the sunne 

 reflects, you shall plant the abricot, verdochio, peache, and 

 damaske plumbe ; against the east side the white muskadine 

 grape, the pescod plumbe, and the Emperiale plumbe ; against 

 the west, the grafted cherries and the olive tree ; and against 

 the south side the almond and the figge tree.' As if this 

 extraordinary mixture were not enough, ' round about the skirts 

 of the alleys' were to be planted plums, damsons, cherries, 

 filberts and nuts of all sorts, and the 'horse clog' and 'bulleye', 

 the two latter being inferior wild plums. Plums were to be 

 5 feet apart, apples and other large fruit 12 feet. 



Young trees should be watered morning and evening in dry 

 summers, and old ones should have the earth dug away from 

 the upper part of the roots from November to March, then the 

 earth, mixed with dung or soap ashes, replaced. Moss was 

 carefully to be scraped off the trees with the back of an old 

 knife, and, to prevent it, the trees manured with swine's dung. 

 Minute distinctions are given as to pruning and washing the 

 trees with strong brine of water and salt, either with a garden 

 pump placed in a tub or with ' squirtes which have many 

 hoales ', the forerunner of modern spraying. 



Cider was then mostly made in the west, as in Devonshire 

 and Cornwall, and perry in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire ; 

 but he leaves out Herefordshire, where it was certainly made at 

 this time. 2 



A curious help to fattening beasts, says Markham, is a lean 

 horse or two kept with them, for the beasts delight to feed 



1 An astonishing statement ; cf. Denton, England in the Fifteenth Cen- 

 tury, p. 56, Neckham, De Natura Rentm, cap. clxvi. and above, p. 93. 



2 Whole Art of Husbandry (ed. 1635), i. 173. 



