116 SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



but in all probability it was planted by the 

 Romans, and fell with their villas. Chaucer, 

 who wrote in the time of Edward the Third, 

 says, 



" And tho that baren bowes, in hir bond, 

 Of the precious Laurer, so notable, 

 Be such as were (I woll ye understond) 

 Most noble Knightes of the Round Table, 

 And eke the Donesperses honourable; 

 Which they bere in the sign of victory, 

 As witness of hir dedes, mightily." 



Turner, our oldest writer on plants, says, in 

 1564, " The bay tre in England is no great 

 tre, but it thryueth there many partes better 

 and is lustier than in Germany." And we 

 find that during the reign of Elizabeth, it was 

 common to strew the floors of distinguished 

 persons in England with bay-leaves. Gerard 

 observes, in 1596, that he had not seen the 

 bay-tree in " Denmarke, Swenia, Poland, 

 Liuonia, or Russia ; or in any of those colde 

 countries where I haue trauelled." And we 

 conclude that it was rare in this country, even 

 so late as the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, as Bradley says, in 1716, " they should 

 be put in pots or cases, and housed in the 

 winter, that their beauty may be preserved." 

 He states that " he has seen pyramids, and 

 headed plants of bays introduced into parterre 



