October 10.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
15 
M 
D 
w 
D 
OCTOBER 10 — 16 , 1850. 
Weather 
Barometer. 
near London 
Thermo. Wind. 
n 1849. [ 
Rain in In. 
Sun 
Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
R. & S. 
Moon’s 
Age. 
Clock 
bef. Sun. 
Day of 
Year. 
10 
Tn 
Oxford and Cambridge Terms begin. 
29 . 877 — 29.692 
56—31 
N.E. 
_ 
17 »• 6 
17 a. 5 
8 
23 
5 
12 
54 
283 
11 
F 
Old Michaelmas Day. 
29 . 526 — 29.475 
54- 42 
N.E. 
— 
19 
15 
9 
5 
6 
13 
9 
284 
12 
S 
Birch leaves fall. 
29 . 614 — 29.513 
53—39 
N.E. 
0.02 
20 
13 
1 9 
55 
7 
13 
24 
285 
13 
Sun 
20 S. AFT. Trim. Trans. Kg. Ed. Con- 
29 . 869 — 29.790 
48—38 
N.E. 
0.06 
22 
11 
10 
50 
9 
13 
39 
286 
14 
M 
Swallow last seen. [fessor. 
30.074 —29.9/S 
51—39 
N.E. 
— 
24 
9 
11 
49 
9 
13 
53 
287 
15 
Tu 
Beech leaves fall. 
30.074 — 30.055 
50—34 
N.E. 
— 1 
25 
6 
morn. 
10 
14 
6 
288 
10 
\V 
Martin last seen. 
30.057 —29.981 
55—37 
E. 
0.05 1 
27 
4 
0 
51 
11 
14 
19 
289 
The 19 th of October is the anniversary of the birth and death of Sir 
Thomas Browne, those boundaries of his life occurring in the years 
1605 and 1682. The chief part of his life was passed at Norwich, the 
place where floriculture first maintained pre-eminent attention in this 
country, and where, in 1637, the first florists’ feast was celebrated 
during his residence there. He participated in the prevailing taste, and, as 
whatever he thought worth undertaking he justly considered should be 
done well, his gardens were finished according to the best taste of the 
time, and Evelyn speaks of them as “a paradise of rarities.” Evelyn 
visited the gardens in 1671 , and thus records the occasion of his going :— 
“ Oct 1 /. My Lord Henry Howard coming this night to visit my Lord 
Chamberlain, and staying a day, would needs have me go with him to 
Norwich, promising to convey me back after a day or two; this, as I 
could not refuse, I was not hard to be persuaded to, having a desire to 
see that famous scholar and physician, Dr. T. Browne, author of the 
Religio Medici , and Vulgar Errors , &c., now lately knighted. Hither, 
then, went my Lord and I alone, in his flying chariot with six horses. 
Next morning I went to see Sir T. Browne (with whom I had some time 
corresponded biHetter, though I had never seen him before). His whole 
house and garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of 
the best collection, especially medals, books, plants, and natural things.” 
To whatever subject Sir T. Browne turned his attention, around that 
subject he usually gathered pleasing information, and gardening was not 
an exception. In 1658 he published The Garden of Cyrus, or the 
quincunxial lozenge, or network plantation of the Ancients , artificially, 
naturally , and mystically considered. This discourse he begins with the 
sacred garden in which the first man was placed, and deduces the prac¬ 
tice of horticulture from the earliest accounts of antiquity to the time of 
the Persian Cvrus, the first man whom we actually know to have planted 
a quincunx, which, however, Sir T. Browne is inclined to believe of an 
earlier date, and not only discovers it in the description of the Hanging 
Gardens of Babylon, but seems willing to persuade his reader that it was 
practised by the feeders on vegetables before the flood. Some of the 
most pleasing performances, observes Dr. Johnson, from whom much of 
our narrative is derived, have been produced by learning and genius 
exercised upon subjects of little importance, as if wit was proud to show 
how it could exalt the low and amplify the little. In the prosecution of 
this sport of fancy Sir T. Browne considers every production of art and 
nature in which he could find any approaches to the form of a quincunx; 
and, as a man once resolved upon ideal discoveries seldom searches long 
in vain, he finds his favourite figure in almost everything, whether 
natural or invented, ancient or modern, rude or artificial, so that a reader 
not watchful against the power of his infusions would imagine that to 
intersect at acute angles was the great business of the world, and that 
nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a 
quincunx. These fanciful sports of great minds are never without some 
advantages to knowledge, and in this playful effort of his genius Sir 
Thomas has interspersed many curious observations on the form of 
plants and the laws of vegetation; appears to have been an accurate 
observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched with precision 
the gradual development of growing plants. This was the only work 
relative to the vegetable kingdom sent to the press by him in his lifetime, 
but from among his papers were published, with several others, a post¬ 
humous treatise, entitled, Observations upon several Plants mentioned 
in Scripture , and another, Of Garlands, or coronary and garland plants. 
The last a subject of mere learned curiosity, but the other, often serving 
to show some Scriptural propriety of description, or elegance of allusion, 
utterly undiscoverable to readers not skilled in Oriental Botany, and even 
to remove some difficulty from narratives, or some obscurity from pre¬ 
cepts. 
The other events of Sir Thomas Browne’s life we will epitomise from 
the same great biographer to whom we have already acknowledged our¬ 
selves indebted. He was born at London, in the parish of St. Michael, 
in Cheapside, where his father, descended from an ancient family at Upton, 
in Cheshire, pursued the avocation of a merchant. Of his youth little is 
known, excep: that he lost his father whilst very young; that he was, 
according to the common fate of orphans, defrauded by one of his 
guardians; and that he was placed for his education at the school of 
Winchester, and Pembroke College, Oxford. After taking his degree of 
Master of Arts, he turned his studies to physic, and practised for some 
time in Oxfordshire, but soon left it for Ireland, and then, as he who once 
begins a wandering life very easily is induced to continue it, proceeded 
to travel on the Continent, studied physic at some of its best schools, and 
entered the degree of Doctor at Leyden, before he again returned home. 
Soon after, in 1635, he published his celebrated treatise, Religio Medici 
(The Religion of a Physician), a work fundamentally Christian, and com¬ 
manding attention by the novelty of its paradoxes, the dignity of its 
sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse 
allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language. 
Soon after this he married Mrs. Mileham, of a good family in Norfolk—a 
union which Was fair game for the contemporary wits, who failed not to 
point out passages in his new work in which he states, “ the whole world 
was made for man, but only the twelfth part of man for woman ; ” and 
that “ man is the whole world, but woman only the rib or crooked part of 
man.” However, she had no reason to repent, for she lived happily with 
him forty-seven years, and bore him ten children, survived him two years, 
and passed her widowhood in plenty, if not in opulence. In 1646 he 
published his Enquiry into Vulgar Errors , to the catalogue of which, if 
a new edition were now published, a goodly addition even might be made 
from among the prejudices of gardeners. One of the beliefs which he 
classes among “ Errors ” science has succeeded in establishing as a truth ; 
for the sympathetic needles suspended over a circular alphabet, by which 
distant friends and lovers may correspond, is realised in the electric 
telegraph. 
But little more remains to be noted of his life. He published several 
other works, many of them useful, and all of them ingenious and 
amusing. In 1665 he was chosen honorary fellow of the College of Phy¬ 
sicians ; in 1671 received the honour of knighthood, and eleven years 
after was deposited in his last earthly place of rest, in the church of St. 
Peter Mancroft, Norwich. “I visited him near his end,” says a friend, 
“ when he had not strength to hear or speak much ; the last words which 
I heard from him were, that he did freely submit to the will of God, 
being without fear.” Yet by those who have not well weighed his 
writings, Sir T. Browne has been sometimes condemned as a contemner 
of revealed religion. Whether he has been so condemned by the fury of 
its friends, says Dr. Johnson, or by the artifice of its enemies, it is no 
difficult task to replace him among the most zealous professors of Chris¬ 
tianity. It is, indeed, somewhat wonderful that he should be placed 
without the pale of Christianity who declares, that “ he assumes the 
honourable style of a Christian,” not because it is “ the religion of his 
country,” but because, “ having in his riper years and confirmed judg¬ 
ment seen and examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles 
of grace, and the law of his own reason, to embrace no other name but 
this;” who, to specify his persuasion yet more, tells us “ he is of the 
Reformed Religion ; of the same belief our Saviour taught, the apostles 
disseminated, the fathers authorized, and the martyrs confirmed;” to 
whom, “where the Scripture is silent, the Church is a text; where that 
speaks, ’tis but a comment; ” and who uses not “ the dictates of his own 
reason but where there is a joint silence in both ; ” and who even goes to 
the unreasonable extreme of “blessing himself that he lived not in the 
days of miracles, when faith had been thrust upon him, but enjoys that 
greater blessing pronounced to all that believe though they saw not.” 
Thus we hear his opinions from himself, and concerning his practice we 
have the testimony of others. When these testimonies concur no higher 
degree of historical certainty can be obtained; and they apparently 
concur to prove that Sir Thomas Browne was a zealous adherent to the 
faith of Christ, that he lived in obedience to His laws, and died in con¬ 
fidence of His mercy. 
Meteorology of the Week. —From observations made at Chiswick 
during the last twenty-three years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
peratures of these days are 60.4° and 42.7°, respectively. The lowest 
temperature observed, 28°, was on the 13th, in 1838. On 77 days rain 
fell, and 84 days were fine. 
iNSECts.—Everybody knows the common 
May-Bug, or Cockchafer ( Melolontha vul¬ 
garis ), but very few persons recognise their 
larvae or grubs, for we are continually applied 
to to state “ what is the name of that pest 
which feeds on the roots of our young plants.” 
To save our friends and selves from this 
trouble, we give a drawing of this grub ; it is 
soft, smooth, grey, and the tail segments 
somewhat glossy ; the head and feet brownish 
dull red. The difference between the length of life of this grub and of 
the beetle proceeding from it is particularly striking, for whilst the grub 
lives through three winters the beetle does not survive longer than ten 
days. The grub is particularly destructive to grass. It undermines the 
richest meadows, says Mr. Kirby, devouring the roots of the grasses, and 
so loosening the turf that it will roll up as if cut with a turfing spade. 
These grubs did so much injury about ninety years since to a poor farmer 
near Norwdch that the authorities of that city presented him with ^25, 1 
and the man and his servant declared that he gathered eighty bushels of 
the beetle. It is to feast upon this grub more particularly that the rooks 
follow the plough. The beetle itself devours the leaves of fruit-trees, as 
well as those of the whitethorn, beech, sycamore, and elm ; it is said never 
to touch the lime. 
Three works, among a pile upon our table, are each so 
excellent of their kind that we will not do the injustice 
to withhold from them this prominent recommendation 
to our readers. 
A Synopsis of the Coniferous Plants grown in Great 
Britain, anil sold by Knight and Perry, at the Exotic 
Nursery, King’s Road, Chelsea, is, without exception, 
the best book upon the Cypress and Fir tribes that has 
No. CVL, Vol. V. 
