The Garden under Snow 



with the bilamellated stigmas." This is quite 

 accurate, but Parkinson gives us an exact 

 portrait : — 



"The seed vessels are divided into two, three, or four 

 rough crooked pods like homes, which, when they are full 

 ripe, open and turn themselves down one edge to another 

 backwards, showing within them divers round black shining 

 seeds, which are the true seed, being full and good, and 

 having also many red or crimson grains, which are lanck 

 and idle, intermixed among the black, as if they were good 

 seed, whereby it maketh a very pretty show." 



I should Hke to stay longer with Parkinson, but 

 space forbids, and there are many other writers of 

 the same date all worth consulting, if only to see 

 the flowers that were then most grown and prized ; 

 but there is rather a monotony among them, and 

 they are all to some extent spoiled by the large 

 admixture of medical virtues which it was then 

 thought necessary to give in the description of 

 every plant. It was the fashion of the times ; if 

 a plant had no medical virtue, it was scarcely 

 thought to be worth growing, and so too often the 

 virtues were invented, and were chiefly grounded 

 on the then fashionable doctrine of signatures. 

 The same desire to force all botany into the 

 service of medicine was shown in the practice of 

 calling botanic gardens physic gardens. The fine 

 old garden at Oxford was so called within the 

 memory of many of us, and the Chelsea Garden 

 still later. 



In the early part of the seventeenth century a 

 77 



