PLANTS : TOBACCO, BROOM, OAKS, ETC. 53 



Tobacco. We have it onely in gardens for medicine ; but in the neighbouring county of 

 Gloucester it is a great commodity. Mdm. " Tobacco was first brought into England by Ralph 

 Lane in the eight and twentieth yeare of Queen Elizabeth's raigne." Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle. 

 Rider's Almanack (1682) sayes since tobacco was first brought into England by Sir Walter Raleigh, 

 99 yeares. Mr. Michael Weekes, of the custome house, assures me that the custom of tobacco is the 

 greatest of all other, and amounts now (1688) to four hundred thousand pounds per annum. [Now 

 (1847) about three millions and a half. J. B.] 



Broome keeps sheep from the rott, and is a medicine not long since found out by physitians for 

 the dropsy. In some places I knew carefull husbandmen that quite destroyed their broome (as at 

 Lanford), and afterwards their sheep died of the rott, from which they were free before the broom 

 was cutt down ; so ever since they doe leave a border of broome about their grounds for their sheep 

 to browze on, to keep them sound. 



Furzes (genista spinosa). I never saw taller or more floiirishing English furzes than at Chalke. 

 The Great Duke of Thuscany carried furzes out of England for a rarity in his magnificent garden. 

 I never saw such dwarft furzes as at Bowdon parke ; they did but just peep above the ground. 



Oakes (the best of trees). We had great plenty before the disafforestations. We had in North 

 Wiltshire, and yet have, though not in the former plenty, as good oakes as any in England. The 

 best that we have now (1670) are at Okesey Parke, Sir Edward Poolc's, in Malmesbury hundred ; 

 and the oakes at Easton Piers (once mine) were, for the number, not inferior to them. In my great- 

 grandfather Lite's time (15 ) one might have driv'n a plough over every oakc in the oak-close, which 

 are now grown stately trees. The great oake by the day-house [dairy house J. B.] is the biggest 

 oake now, I believe, in all the countie. There is a common wealth of rookes there. When I was 

 a boy the two greatest oakes were, one on the hill at the parke at Dracot Cerne ; the other at Mr. 

 Sadler's, at Longley Burrell. 'Twas of one of these trees, I remember, that the trough of the paper 

 mill at Long-deane, in the parish of Yatton Keynell, anno 1636, was made. In Garsden Parke (now 

 the Lord Ferrars) is perhaps the finest hollow oake in England ; it is not high, but very capacious, 

 and well wainscotted ; with a little table, which I thinke eight may sitt round. When an oake is 

 felling, before it falles, it gives a kind of shreikes or groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it 

 were the genius of the oake lamenting. E. Wyld, Esq. hath heard it several! times. This gave the 

 occasion of that expression in Ovid's Metamorph. lib. viii. fab. ii. about Erisichtlion's felling of the 

 oake sacred to Ceres : "gemitumqj dedit decidua quercus." 



In a progresse of K. Charles I. in time of peace, three score and ten carts stood under the great 



oake by Woodhouse. It stands in Sir James Thinne's land. On this oake Sir Fr. D hung 



up thirteen, after quarter. Woodhouse was a garrison for the Parliament. He made a sonn hang his 

 father, or contra. From the body of this tree to the extreme branches is nineteen paces of Captain 

 Hamden, who cannot pace less than a yard. (Of prodigious trees of this kind you will see many 

 instances in my Sylva, which Mr. Ray has translated and inserted in his Herbal. J. EVELYN.) 



In the New Forest, within the trenches of the castle of Molwood (a Roman camp) is an old oake, 

 which is a pollard and short. It putteth forth young leaves on Christmas day, for about a week at 

 that time of the yeare. Old Mr. Hastings, of Woodlands, was wont to send a basket full of them 

 every yeare to King Charles I. I have seen of them severall Christmasses brought to my father. 



