Introducers of Exotic Flowers, etc. 139 
in vain tried by a graft to bequeath his name to a new 
fruit; but persisting on wrong principles, this votary of 
Pomona has died without a name. We sympathise with 
Sir William Temple when he exultingly acquaints us with 
the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his 
peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to have 
equalled those of Fontainebleau and Gascony, while the 
Italians agreed that his white figs were as good as any of 
that sort in Italy; and of his “ having had the honour” to 
naturalise in this country four kinds of grapes, with his 
liberal distributions of cuttings from them, because “he 
ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are 
the better. 
The greater number of our exotic flowers and fruits 
were carefully transported into this country by many of 
our travelled nobility and gentry; some names have been 
casually preserved. The learned Linacre first brought, on 
his return from Italy, the damask-rose ; and Thomas Lord 
Cromwell, in the reign of Henry VIII., enriched our fruit- 
gardens with three different plums. In the reign of 
Elizabeth, Edward Grindal, afterwards archbishop of 
Canterbury, returning from exile, transported here the 
medicinal plant of the tamarisk ; the first oranges appear 
to have been brought into England by one of the Carew 
family; for a century after, they still flourished at the 
family seat at Beddington, in Surrey. The cherry orchards 
of Kent were first planted about Sittingbourne, by a 
gardener of Henry VIII.; and the currant-bush was trans- 
planted when our commerce with the island of Zante was 
first opened inthe same reign. ‘The elder Tradescant in 
1620, entered himself on board of a privateer, armed 
against Morocco, solely with a view of finding an. oppor- 
tunity of stealing apricots into Britain: and it appears 
that he succeeded in his design. To Sir Walter Rawleigh 
we have not been indebted solely for the luxury of the 
tobacco-plant, but for that infinitely useful root, which 
forms a part of our daily meal, and often the entire meal 
of the poor man—the potato, which deserved to have been 
called a Rawlegh. Sir Anthony Ashley first planted 
cabbages in this country, and a cabbage at his feet appears 
on his monument. Sir Richard Weston first brought 
clover-grass into England from Flanders, in 1645; and the 
figs planted by Cardinal Pole, at Lambeth, so far back as 
the reign of Henry VIII., are said to be still remaining 
there: nor is this surprising, for Spilman, who set up the 
