150 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



1797 notices the death of Mr. S. Brigs, 

 the last surviving member of a Society of 

 Herbarists at Norwich, who, among other 

 services to horticulture, 



" Were the first to cultivate and propagate the 

 rhubarb plant in this country ; which they effected so 

 successfully, as to rival in colour, flavour, and medi- 

 cinal virtue, the roots of the Russia and Turkey 

 kind." 



But the fact is that rhubarb, as a drug, 

 had been known more than two centuries 

 prior to the decease of Mr. Brigs. For in 

 Gosson's Plays Confuted in Five Actions 

 (1580), it is said that the physicians con- 

 sidered this medicine hot, yet it cooled the 

 hottest fevers. Nor is the writer in the 

 magazine happier, I think, in his statement 

 that the home-grown root equalled that im- 

 ported from China, and popularly known 

 as Turkey rhubarb. It has not even yet 

 reached that point of perfection. Evelyn 

 saw it growing in the Physic Garden at 

 Oxford in 1654. 



The application of the plant to the pur- 

 poses of the table does not seem to go farther 



