1 2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



Porkington MS. (fifteenth century), 1 entitled 

 A Treatise for a man to know which time of 

 the year it is best to graft or to plant trees, and 

 also to make a tree to bear all manner of fruit 

 of divers colours and odours, with many other 

 things. 



This compilation sounds voluminous, but 

 it occupies only ten small octavo pages in 

 type. You are instructed what you should 

 do under sundry signs of the zodiac, and 

 lessons are given in pruning and grafting. A 

 good deal of it seems to be abstracted from 

 Aristotle and Palladius ; but the under-quoted 

 reads like a little trait of primitive English 

 whimsicality : 



" Also, for to make that a pearl, or a precious 

 stone, or a farthing, or any other manner of thing be 

 found in an apple, take an apple or a pear, after it has 

 flowered, and somewhat waxen, and thrust in hard at 

 the bud's end which one thou wilt of these things 

 aforesaid, and let it grow, and mark well the apple 

 that thou didst put in the thing, whatever it be." 



Some very fanciful ideas are advanced 



1 Early English Miscellanies > Wart on Club, 1855, 

 pp. 66-72. 



