134 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
But the space is limited; part of it is hard and dry under the 
shadow of a roof * : what little growth it permits is ragged and 
mildewed : another part is starved by a high brick wall which robs 
it of air and sun. Still, even here nothing is quite lost, and some of 
your seedlings will at last take hold. Such as it is then, the garden 
is all his own work, and you may gather the persevering genuineness 
of the man from the state in which he found it. With unerring 
instinct he pitches on the summum malum, the worst enemy of the 
" Paestan art." Need I specify the nettle ? Little do they know 
of the nettle who have not attacked it in the fastnesses where it 
has long held sway. " What is one to do ? Deep down the roots 
are matted and linked and riveted like basketwork or the wattled 
hurdles of the fold."f But there is no time to lose. "I prepare to 
attack, armed with the ' tooth of Saturn,' tear up the clods and rend 
them from the clinging network of nettle-roots." % Again and again 
they reappear, but he beats them at last, and the strangled herbs 
begin in time to grow. Though his hands are hard and weather- 
beaten now, there yet remains the only other drawback to gardening 
besides backache — the natural shrinking from handling manure. § 
He submits, and with his hands he loads the baskets for carrying it 
to the plot. It is a pleasant er task to give the water from the casks, 
drop by drop, with the hollow of one's hands, || for there is no rose 
to our water-pot H yet, and the full stream, " ferocior impetus," of the 
pitcher would wash away the seedlings. " So toil and zeal fill the 
hours which might have been idle, and the more one works the more 
one gets to know." There is the plot at last, soil well broken up by 
the " unca rastra," so universal on the Continent but so little used in 
England, and " the rich rotten dung is well dug in " (" pinguis fer- 
menta fimi super insinuantur "). Next, annuals and perennials have 
their allotted space, and here is the list of what he specially grew. 
The English names are taken from Gerard's " Herbal " and Earle's 
Saxon notes. 
* " Negat ingenuos holerum progignere fructus." 
f " Quid facerem ? tarn spissus erat radicibus infra 
ordo catenatis, virides ut texere lentis 
viminibus crates stabuli solet arte magister." 
\ " Ergo moras rumpens Saturni dente jacentes 
aggredior glebas, torpentiaque arva revulsis 
sponte renascentum complexibus urticanim 
erigo." 
§ He is not one who — 
" Callosas aere multo 
detrectat fuscare manus et stercora plenis 
vitat in arenti disponere pulvere qualis." 
|| Flumina pura cadis inferre capacious acri 
curavi studio, et propriis infundere palmis 
guttatim." 
^ Is there not an earthen Early British (?) water-pot with rose at Alnwick 
Castle ? 
Sage . . 
Rue .. 
Sothernwood 
Salvia 
Ruta 
Abrotanum 
