142 fkfo=(£nglantis Eartttes. 



Sorrel. 

 Par/ley. 



Marygold. 



its rugged coasts to obedience to English husbandry. What with their garden 

 beans, and Indian beans, and pease (" as good as ever I eat in England," says 

 Higginson in 1629) ; their beets, parsnips, turnips, and carrots (" our turnips, 

 parsnips, and carrots are both bigger and sweeter than is ordinary to be found in 

 England," says the same reverend writer) ; their cabbages and asparagus , — both 

 thriving, we are told, exceedingly ; their radishes and lettuce ; their sorrel, pars- 

 ley, chervil, and marigold, for pot-herbs; and their sage, thyme, savory of both 

 kinds, clary, anise, fennel, coriander, spearmint, and pennyroyal, for sweet herbs, 

 — not to mention the Indian pompions and melons and squanter-squashes, " and 

 other odde fruits of the country," — the first-named of which had got to be so well 

 approved among the settlers, when Josselyn wrote in 1672, that what he calls 

 "the ancient New-England standing dish" (we may well call it so now!) was 

 made of them; and, finally, their pleasant, familiar flowers, lavender-cotton and 

 hollyhocks and satin ("we call this herbe, in Norfolke, sattin," says Gerard; 

 "and, among our women, it is called honestie") and gillyflowers, which meant 

 pinks as well, and dear English roses, and eglantine, — yes, possibly, hedges of 

 eglantine (p. 90 note), — surely the gardens of New England, fifty years after the 

 settlement of the country, were as well stocked as they were a hundred and fifty 

 years after. Nor were the first planters long behindhand in fruit. Even at his 

 first visit, in 1639, our author was treated with "half a score very fair pippins,'' 

 from the Governor's Island in Boston Harbor; though there was then, he says 

 (Voyages, p. 29),'" not one apple tree nor pear planted yet in no part of the coun- 

 trey but upon that island." But he has' a much better account to give in 1671 : 

 "The quinces, cherries, damsons, set the dames a work. Marmalad and preserved 

 damsons is to be met with in every house. Our fruit-trees prosper abundantly, — 

 apple-trees, pear-trees, quince-trees, cherry-trees, plum-trees, barberry-trees. I 

 have observed, with admiration, that the kernels sown, or the succors planted, 

 produce as fair and good fruit, without graffing, as the tree from whence they 

 were taken. The countrey is replenished with fair and large orchards. It was 

 affirmed by one Mr. Woolcut (a magistrate in Connecticut Colony), at the Cap- 

 tain's messe (of which I was), aboard the ship I came home in, that he made five 

 hundred hogsheads of syder out of his own orchard in one j'ear." — Voyages, p. 

 189-90. Our barberry-bushes, now so familiar inhabitants of the hedgerows of 

 Eastern New England, should seem from this to have come, with the eglantines, 

 from the gardens of the first settlers. Barberries " are planted in most of our 

 English gardens," says Gerard. 



