4 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



indication in those early days that, centuries 

 ahead, these islands would become pre-eminently 

 a land of gardens. 



Yet we may gather that even then, Nature-taught 

 like the Hottentot and the Kaffir of the South 

 African continent, the ancient Briton had some 

 practical acquaintance with the uses of herbs. A 

 remote derivation has even been assigned for the 

 very name of Britain from the Celtic " brith," 

 or " brit," meaning painted in which may lie 

 hidden an allusion to the woad-stained bodies of 

 its earliest inhabitants, implying in itself a more 

 than superficial knowledge of the properties of 

 plants. It is, moreover, on record that noble 

 youths of Gaul were sent to Britain to perfect their 

 education under the tuition of the Druids, who 

 were far-famed, amongst other learning, for their 

 surpassing attainments in plant lore ; though it 

 may be a question how much of it these mysterious 

 teachers would be willing to part with. We are 

 not greatly concerned, however, to prove the truth 

 of assertions such as these. It may even be that 

 all traditions of the kind, with the time-honoured 

 story of sacred oak, and cult of the consecrated 

 mistletoe, stand in danger of being relegated to 

 the dim regions of myth. Yet we may not doubt 

 that the waking to life, in the springtide, of the 

 green things of the earth, the soft gleam of prim- 

 roses in sylvan glades, the blue shimmer of nod- 

 ding bells and the whispering leaves of the forest, 

 found answering voices even then in the gentler 

 human instincts of the time, which were destined 

 to re-echo for ever and aye. 



