MARCH 59 



shade. This is curious, as umbrellas did not, I believe, 

 come into general use till very much later. 



1693. Evelyn publishes his translation of * The Corn- 

 pleat Gard'ner, written by the famous Monsieur de la 

 Quintinye, Chief Director of all the Gardens of the 

 French King.' They must have been wonderful gardens, 

 those of Louis XIV. ; and one of the most beautiful hand- 

 coloured flower books in the library of the museum at 

 South Kensington was executed by order of the king for 

 Madame de Montespan. This translation of Evelyn's 

 has some interesting little illustrations of gardens, plans 

 of beds, fruit-trees, pruning, &c. The frontispiece is a 

 portrait of Evelyn in a hideous wig of the day. 



1710. I have an English Herbal by William Salmon, 

 doctor to Queen Anne. It contains a most fulsome 

 dedication to the queen. The type of man who even in 

 that century was capable of publishing such an effusion 

 would be very likely, I think, to have caused the death of 

 all Queen Anne's children, while quite convinced all the 

 time that they died solely by the will of Almighty God. 

 What a curious person that Queen Anne must have been, 

 who allowed the great category of persecuting laws against 

 the Catholics in Ireland to be framed in her reign, and 

 whom Horace Walpole called * Goody Anne, the wet- 

 nurse of the Church ' ! The book is purely medical, and is 

 supposed to be principally written for the use of doctors, 

 but it describes flowering garden plants as well as the 

 wild ones. It has a large, coarsely executed frontispiece, 

 mostly torn out in my copy. The drawings of the plants 

 show no artistic improvement over Parkinson's, but are 

 much in the same style. 



1739. ' New Improvements of Planting and Gardening, 

 both Phylosophical and Practical, by Eichard Bradley.' 

 This is a small book with rather good copper-plates, and 

 interesting as showing the researches and ideas of an 



