Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/136

 mint; for salads, violet flowers, parsley, red mint, cress, primrose buds, daisies, dandelion, and red fennel, to be eaten raw with olive oil and spices; the roots included parsnips, turnips, radishes, "karettes," and saffron. One great ambition of the medieval gardener was to excel in the art of grafting. They grafted vines on cherry-trees, pears on hawthorns, apples on elms. They were thoroughly ingenious, but hopelessly unpractical. "If thou wilt that in the stone of a peach be found a nut-kernal, graft a sprout of a peach-tree on the stock of a nut-tree," suggests an old gardening book; and yet again: "A peach-tree shall bring forth pomegranates if it be sprinkled with goat's milk three days when it beginneth to flower, and the apples of a peach-tree shall wax red if its scion be grafted on a playne-tree."

But if our forefathers neglected the cultivation of vegetables, they encouraged the art of fruit-growing in England. Apples and pears grew in great variety; they had medlars, figs, and cherries, quinces, plums, peaches, gooseberries, and mulberries; cultivated strawberries were yet rare, but they grew to a good size in the famous gardens at Holborn. For the most part they