In My Vicarage Garden 



march of the whole, up hill and down dale is sure and 

 steady, till as you stand upon some eminence you see 

 stretching to the eastward of each tract of older trees a 

 long cloud of younger ones, like a green comet's tail." 



The forest trees have detained me too long, for 

 I must say something of the fruit trees and 

 vegetables. I have already mentioned the walnut 

 and Spanish chestnut as foreign trees, which were 

 certainly not in Britain in A.D. lOO. We can 

 certainly say the same of the almond, apricot, fig, 

 medlar, mulberry, nectarine, peach, pear, quince, 

 most of which were introduced in the sixteenth 

 century, though the pear, and perhaps the fig, may 

 have been introduced by the Romans. The com- 

 mon fruits, apple, gooseberry, currants, raspberries, 

 and strawberries, are all descended from our native 

 fruits. 



In vegetables there has been a great change, 

 for the vegetable garden of the ancient Briton 

 must have been very poorly supplied, and pro- 

 bably he paid very little attention to it. The 

 Roman colonists may have made him acquainted 

 with peas, beans, and onions, but the bulk of our 

 present vegetables date from the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries, and it is a curious thing 

 that with all our commerce with foreign countries, 

 and the strong desire to get new things, scarcely 

 one new vegetable has really been established 

 among us since that date. The rhubarb was 

 introduced as a culinary vegetable during the last 

 century, but the plant was grown in England long 

 i68 



