Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/395



is generally believed that little horticultural skill prevailed in this country before the sixteenth century; an erroneous opinion mainly attributable to the credit hitherto enjoyed by Harrison's "Description of England," printed in Holinshed's Chronicles. That curious, and, in some respects, valuable essay, contains so many statements wholly at variance with well ascertained facts, that it is not to be taken as a good authority on any one point. Indeed it requires a very small amount of reflection when we read such statements as that the first apple orchard was planted in Sussex, in the fifteenth century, and that cherries were first grown in Kent, to perceive there must exist great misapprehension on