By Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. 



has become in fourteen generations, as strong and as vigorous 

 as our indigenous plants are, and as perfect in all its parts 

 as in its native climate. 



Some of our most common flowering shrubs have been 

 long introduced into the gardens ; the Bay tree has been cul- 

 tivated more than two centuries ; it is mentioned by Tusser, 

 in the list of garden plants inserted in his book, called 500 

 Points of good Husbandry, printed in 1573. 



The Laurel was introduced by Master Cole, a merchant, 

 living at Hampstead, some years before 1629, when Parkin- 

 son published his Paradisus Terrestris, and at that time we 

 had in our gardens, Oranges, Myrtles of three sorts, Lau- 

 ristinus, Cypress, Phillyrea, Alaternus, Arbutus ; a Cactus 

 brought from Bermudas, and the Passion flower, which last 

 had flowered here, and showed a remarkable particularity, by 

 rising from the ground near a month sooner if a seedling plant, 

 than if it grew from roots brought from Virginia. 



All these were at that time rather tender plants ; Master 

 Cole cast a blanket over the top of his Laurel, in frosty 

 weather, to protect it, but though nearly two centuries have 

 since elapsed, not one of them will yet bear with certainty 

 our winter frosts. 



Though some of these shrubs ripen their seeds in this 

 climate, it never has been, I believe, the custom of gardeners 

 to sow them ; some are propagated by suckers and cuttings, 

 and others by imported seeds ; consequently the very identi- 

 cal Laurel introduced by Master Cole, and some others of the 

 plants enumerated by Parkinson, are now actually growing 

 in our gardens ; no wonder then, that these original shrubs 

 have not become hardier, though probably they would have 



