178 A HISTURV OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



Parliament" took "farther notice," and it was left untouched. 

 The absence of large new gardens is more marked when 

 compared with the numbers which appear to have been laid 

 out after the Restoration. 



The progress, during the middle part of this period, was 

 in the culture of economic plants, and not in garden 

 design, or in the flower garden. Many of the old super- 

 stitions about plants were exposed. Austen fills several pages 

 in contradicting old-fashioned notions, " Errors discovered," 

 he calls it, such things as writing an inscription on a peach- 

 stone or almond, and planting it, expecting the same 

 writmg to appear in the ripe fruit of the tree : — " To 

 have all stone fruit taste as yee shall think good lay the 

 stones to soak in such liquor as yee would have them 

 taste of," or " to have red apples, put the grafts into Pikes' 

 blood." He thus sums up these recipes : — " These things 

 cannot be." " Errors in practise," he seeks to correct also, 

 and shows much good sense in his remarks, on planting or 

 moving fruit trees : — " Many remove their trees in Winter 

 or neere the Spring whereas they ought to remove them in 

 September or thereabouts." Another error was " planting trees 

 too neere together ; I account lo or 12 yards a competant 

 distance for Apple-trees or Pear-trees, for Cherry or Plum 

 7 or 8." Many plant " too old trees in orchards, and 

 neglect to plant their trees in as good or better soyle, 

 then that from which they are removed." He points out 

 some of the writings in which such errors were to be found. 

 " The Countryman^ s Recreation, 1640, is full of these fancies," also 

 in the works of " Didymus " or Thomas Hill, and the Conntry 

 Farm, by Gabriel Piatt. The necessity of refuting such errors 

 shows how primitive many gardeners still must have been in 

 their ideas. A small work on fruit trees by Francis Drope in 

 1672 is free from absurdities ; but Adam Speed's book, a few 

 years later than Austen's, is full of errors as apparently ludicrous 

 as those " discovered " by Austen, so gradual is the passage 

 " from darkness to dawn." I need only quote two of his 

 solemn assertions as specimens: — "To make white lilies become 

 red, fill a hole in a lily root with any red colour," and " the 



