8 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 



and sometimes sassafras, and divers others wholesome 

 and medicinable herbs and trees." 



But the wild grape, however luxuriant its growth, 

 could hardly be expected to satisfy the taste of men 

 accustomed to the vintages of France and the valley 

 of the Rhine; hence their greatest delight in its abun- 

 dance lay in the appeal which it made to their hope of 

 producing, with it, a better strain than the world had 

 yet known. To this end the strictest injunctions with 

 regard to planting vines were laid upon the first plant- 

 ers of Virginia by the First Representative Assembly 

 in America. This Assembly, "convented at James 

 Citty in Virginia, July 30, 1619," enacted first "about 

 the plantation of Mulberry trees; . . . every 

 man as he is seatted upon his division, doe for seven 

 years together, every yeare plante and maintaine in 

 growte six Mulberry trees at the least, and as many 

 more as he shall thinke conveniente and as his virtue 

 and Industry shall move him to plante, and that all 

 such persons as shall neglecte the yearly planting and 

 maintaining of that small proportion shalbe subjecte 

 to the censure of the Governour and the Counsell of 

 Estate." Following this, each is ordered to plant one 

 hundred plants each year of "Silke-flaxe" ; and 

 "hempe, English and Indian," and English flax and 

 "anniseeds" are each required and enjoined — "each 

 that have any of those seeds to make tryal thereof the 



