EVELYN'S " SYLVA " 



ALSO 



KALENDARIUM HORTENSE ; Or, ye Gard'ners Almanao ; 

 Directing what he'is to do Monethly throughout the year. 



— Tibi res antiquaa laudis et artis 



Ingredior, tantos ausus recludere f onteis. Virg. 



LONDON : Printed by Jo. Martyn, and Ja. Allestry, Printers 



to the Royal Society, and are to be sold at their Shop at the 



Bell in S. Paul's Church-yard ; 



MDCLXIV. 



This book was the first ever printed for the Royal 

 Society, and contains, as may be seen, a practically com- 

 plete record of seventeenth century planting and garden- 

 ing, thus having an unique interest for all who follow the 

 craft. 



John Evelyn, from the day he began his lessons 

 under the Friar in the porch of Wotton Church, was a 

 curious observer of men and things, but especially was 

 he devoted to all manners and styles of gardening. 



Nothing was too small, too trivial to escape his notice ; 

 from the weather-cocks on the trees near Margate — put 

 there on the days the farmers feasted their servants, to 

 the interest he found in watching the first man he ever 

 saw drink coffee. 



The positions he held under Charles II. and James II. 

 were many and varied, yet he found time to collect 

 samples in Venice, and travel extensively, to write a Play, 

 a treatise called : " Mundus Muliebris, or the Ladies' 

 Dressing Room, Unlocked," and a pamphlet, called 

 " Tyrannus, or the Mode," in which he sought to make 

 Charles II. dress like a Persian, and succeeded in so 

 doing. 



But above all these things he held his chiefest pleasure 

 in seeing and talking of the arrangement of gardens, 

 passing on this love to his son John, who, when a boy of 

 fifteen, at Trinity College, Oxford, translated " Rapin, 



97 m 



