EUPHORBIACEAE. 97 
The geometrical style of gardening, in which the box-trees played so prominent a 
part, was brought to great perfection in the time of Louis XIV. The dwarf variety of 
box was used to trace out the pattern of a parterre, the space between the lines being 
filled in with different coloured sands, earths, shells, and other articles, so as to produce 
red, white, and black grounds, on which the green box appeared to advantage. Lord 
Bacon says: “As for making of knots and figures with divers coloured earths, they 
be but toys; you may see as good sights many times in tarts.” We incline to think 
he would repeat his remark if he were introduced to a portion of the Horticultural 
Gardens at Kensington at the present day. The art of cutting the box and other trees 
into artificial forms was carried to such an extent among the Romans that both Pliny 
and Vitruvius use the word topiarius to express the art of the gardener—a proof that 
the art of clipping was considered the highest accomplishment for a Roman gardener. 
Topiary adornments, as they are called, were most highly prized in gardens about 
the middle of the seventeenth century, and began to go out of favour in the early 
part of the eighteenth, when they afforded subjects for raillery among the wits of 
the day :— 
“There likewise mote be seen on every side 
The shapely box of all its branching pride, 
Ungently shorne, and with preposterous skill, 
To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill 
Transform’d, and human shapes of monstrous size.” 
In former times the uses of the box were various, but are now almost forgotten, 
The bark and leaves are purgative and sudorific. A tincture made from the leaves is 
used in Germany as a remedy in intermittent fever, having obtained its reputation 
from its employment by a quack, who sold the secret to Joseph I. The wood scraped 
to a powder has been used as a substitute for guiacum, and an oil distilled from it is 
said to be good for toothache. According to Parkinson, a “decoction of the leaves 
and sawdust will change the hair to an auburn colour.”’ We have not heard, how- 
ever, of its use during the fashionable rage for auburn hair, although, we fear, far 
more objectionable applications are frequently employed to obtain the correct shade of 
auburn tresses by those who sacrifice nature to fashion. Box is sometimes substituted 
for holly in the churches at Christmas, and in a note to Wordsworth’s poems we are 
informed that “‘in several parts of the north of England, when a funeral takes place, 
a basinful of sprigs of box is placed at the door of the house from which the coffin is 
taken up, and each person who attends the funeral takes one of these sprigs, and 
throws it into the grave of the deceased person.” 
The box is the badge of the Highland clan M‘Intosh, and the variegated kind of the 
clan M‘Pherson. It is asserted by many authors that box-trees are never cropped by 
cattle, and that the Corsican honey was rendered poisonous from the bees feeding on 
the flowers of the box. In our own experience we can testify to the death of several 
fowls, only to be explained by the fact of their having eaten largely of box-leayes. 
The largest box-trees in the neighbourhood of London are at Syon and Kew, each 
nearly 15 feet in height. In the Botanic Garden at Oxford there are two old trees, 
one of which, in 1835, was 21 feet high. The largest box-hedge is at Petworth. It 
is supposed to be more than two centuries old, and is more than 12 feet broad at the 
bottom, 15 feet high, and 40 yards long. The only county in England in which the 
box appears to be naturalised is Surrey. It is so abundant in the neighbourhood of 
Dorking, as to have given the name Boxhill to a well-known pleasant locality about 
twenty miles from London, 
VOL. VIII. oO 
