164 



THE BOX. 



is better adapted than any other tree, owing to the 

 closeness of its habit of growth and its suffering 

 no injury from the frequent use of the shears. 



It is a slow grower, attains a great age, and 

 will thrive in most soils, and at almost any tem- 

 perature. It was so trained as to represent ar- 

 chitectural devices, figures of men and animals, 

 arcades, and various other forms. The method 

 adopted in order to produce these various sem- 

 blances was to enclose the tree in a light frame 

 of v/ickerwork, constructed in the shape required, 

 and to cut back the shoots which protruded till 

 a solid mass of verdure was produced. The 

 wickerwork was then removed, and the Box-tree 

 compelled to retain its grotesque shape by fre- 

 quent use of the shears or knife. Even now we 

 may occasionally fall in with a vegetable globe or 

 some other such absurdity : but gardeners now-a- 

 days, instead of wasting their time in distorting 

 Nature, employ it more profitably in assisting her 

 to produce new varieties, or studying how to rear 

 and acclimatize new species, of useful and orna- 

 mental plants. 



Various extracts and perfumes were formerly 

 made from the lea^ves and bark of this tree, and 

 were considered specifics for a yet greater variety 

 of diseases. Modern science has, however, dis- 

 possessed by a gardener among the ancient Romans. This appears to 

 have been equally the case in Europe in modern times ; gardeners, even 

 so late as the time of the Commonwealth, being called by Commenius 

 pleachers'' (from the old word pleach ** to interweave"). About the 

 middle of the seventeenth century, the taste for verdant sculpture 

 was at its height in England ; and, about the beginning of the 

 eighteenth, it afforded a subject for raillery for the v/its of the day, 

 soon afterwards beginning to decline." — Loudon, 



