Bacon as a Gardener. 99 



Peach upon a Cherry ; And contrariwise, if an Early- 

 Comming Fruit upon a Stocke of a Fruit Tree that 

 Commeth late, the Graft will beare Fruit late, As a 

 Cherry upon a Peach. But these are but Imagina- 

 tions, and untrue. The cause is, for that the Cions 

 overruleth the Stocke quite ; And the Stocke is but 

 Passive onely, and giveth Aliment, but no Motion to 

 the Graft." 



Here is another idea, which still forms 

 part of the popular creed, and perhaps 

 rightly : 



" A Tree, at the first Rooting, should not bee shaken, 

 until it hath taken Root fully : And therefore some 

 have put two little Forkes about the Bottome of their 

 Trees, to keepe them upright ; But after a yeares 

 Rooting, then shaking doth the Tree good, by Loosen- 

 ing of the Earth, and (perhaps) by exercising (as it 

 were) and stirring the Sap of the Tree." 



It is in this case, as in others, a truism, 

 that there is scarcely perhaps a first-class 

 florist of the day, who could not revise every 

 page of the Sylva Sylvarum, and who might 

 not characterize it as a waste of time even to 

 peruse such a volume. Of course, the same 

 argument may be employed towards all 

 obsolete treatises on progressive sciences ; 



