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II. — Fruit-growing in Kent. By Charles Whitehead, F.L.S., 
F.G.S., of Banning House, Maidstone. 
Kent has been celebrated for the production of famous fruitjfor 
several centuries. Drayton, in the first decade of the seven- 
teenth century, thus apostrophised the county, in his quaint 
4 Polyolbion ': — 
" 0, famous Kent ! 
What country hath this isle that can compare with thee, 
Which hast within thyself as much as thou can'st wish? 
Thy conyes, ven'son, fruit, thy sorts of fowls and fish : 
Whose golden gardens seem th' Hesperides to mock : 
Nor there the damson wants, nor dainty apricock, 
] Nor pippin, which we hold of kernel fruits the king, 
The apple orange ; then the savoury russetting, 
The sweeting for whose sake the plowboys oft make war." 
And sundry other fruits, of good yet several taste, 
That have their sundry names in sundry countries placed." 
Fruit-lands — orchards — are frequently mentioned in charters 
or deeds granting or conveying lands in the reign of Charles 
the First and James the First, in various Kentish parishes 
where fruit is now grown. Lambarde, in his ' Perambulation 
of Kent,' says that King Henry the Eighth's fruiterer planted 
at Tenham in 1583, " by his great coste and industrie, the 
sweet Cherry, the temperate Pipyn, and the golden Renate," 
having obtained the " plantes from beyond the seas."* Since 
the time of Lambarde's work the area of the fruit-plantations 
in the county has varied considerably, to a certain extent accord- 
ing to the profit made from the cultivation of hops, which were 
brought from Flanders in the sixteenth century. When hops 
paid well, fruit-trees were grubbed up and hops were planted in 
their stead. When hops did not pay, fruit-trees were substituted 
for these more speculative plants ; and this alternating process 
has been continued up to recent times. Hasted, in his ' History 
of Kent,' published one hundred years ago, remarks of certain 
parishes in East Kent, that " there were large plantations of 
fruit till they were displanted to make room for hops, which 
are found to thrive well in old orchard ground." He adds, 
" Orchards are beginning to be planted again in consequence of 
the low price of hops."| 
The climate of Kent is temperate, and in most seasons the 
common fruits ripen well ; the mean temperature of the three 
* ' A Perambulation of Kent.' By William Lambarde (1591). 
t Ilasted's ' History of Kent,' vol. i. p. 539. 
