First English Work on Gardening. 1 3 



here on the subject of grafting, and great 

 stress is laid on the use, not only in that 

 process, but where a limb was severed from 

 any tree, of a bandage of clay to exclude the 

 air and prevent haemorrhage. It is evident 

 that in the fifteenth century a taste prevailed 

 for novelties and hybrids : how to grow cherries 

 without stones, how to have peaches with 

 kernels like nuts, how to make a peach 

 produce pomegranates; and the same in- 

 genious experiments were made in the flower- 

 garden. 



The first regular treatise on gardening was 

 the work, not of a technist, but of a man of 

 letters, Thomas Hill, a native and inhabitant * 

 of London, but at a time when the limits of 

 the City were infinitely more contracted than 

 now, and even Holborn was regarded as a 

 suburb. It appeared in or about 1560, and 

 was often republished. But it is scarcely a 

 satisfactory performance, as Hill fills up a 

 good deal of his not very substantial volume 

 with passages from ancient writers; he be- 

 longed to the old school, which loved to 

 begin at the beginning. But luckily he 



