THE KITCHEN GARDEN 175 



meets the hoe smiling. The great henbane is re- 

 garded to-day as a curiosity, but there must have 

 been other gardeners who tried in vain to eradicate it 

 perhaps in a less tidy and more overgrown garden. 

 For the past twenty years no partiality has been shown 

 for the thorn-apple, a leaf from which cured, let us 

 hope, the asthma of some medieval monk. Twenty, 

 nay, thirty years ago, we remember, a solitary thorn- 

 apple came up, spread its cucumber-like blossom, and 

 matured its prickly burr. We have scarcely known 

 the garden since, but here again is the solitary annual 

 plant, its burr open and grinning with black seeds 

 about to fall. Let us leave the mandrake, still ram- 

 bling here, the aconite promoted to the flower garden, 

 and others, and return to pleasanter subjects. The 

 black art of those who founded this garden will not 

 bear dwelling on. Some of those stories poured into 

 the ears of avaricious Henry may have been true. 



