OF SELBORNE. 315 



barley or beans, may contribute not a little to the 

 sweetening their blood and correcting their juices; for 

 the inhabitants of mountainous districts, to this day, 

 are still liable to the itch and other cutaneous disorders, 

 from a wretchedness and poverty of diet. 



As to the produce of a garden, every middle-aged 

 person of observation may perceive, within his own 

 memory, both in town and country, how vastly the con- 

 sumption of vegetables is increased. Green-stalls in 

 cities now support multitudes in a comfortable state, 

 while gardeners get fortunes. Every decent labourer 

 also has his garden, which is half his support, as well 

 as his delight ; and common farmers provide plenty of 

 beans, peas, and greens, for their hinds to eat with their 

 bacon ; and those few that do not, are despised for their 

 sordid parsimony, and looked upon as regardless of the 

 welfare of their dependants. Potatoes have prevailed 

 in this little district, by means of premiums, within 

 these twenty years only ; and are much esteemed here 

 nbw by the poor, who would scarce have ventured to 

 taste them in the last reign. 



Our Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of cab- 

 bage, because they call the month of February sprout- 

 cale*; but long after their days, the cultivation of 

 gardens was little attended to. The religious, being 

 men of leisure, and keeping up a constant correspond- 

 ence with Italy, were the first people among us that 

 had gardens and fruit-trees in any perfection, within 

 the walls of their abbeys 5 and priories. The barons 



4 As our Saxon ancestors called the month of February ' Sprout- 

 cale,' so the names of many other months were equally significant; viz. 

 March, stormy month ; May, Thrimilchi, the cows then being milked 

 three times a day ; June, dig and weed month ; September, barley month, 



&C. MlTFORD. 



5 " In monasteries, the lamp of knowledge continued to burn, however 

 dimly. In them, men of business were formed for the state : the art of 

 writing was cultivated by the monks ; they were the only proficients in 

 mechanics, gardening, and architecture." See Dalrymple's Annals of 

 Scotland. 



