Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/397

 IN EARLY TIMES. 297 acclimatised, but the science of gardening wonld gradually be forgotten. In fact it was not resuscitated in any part of Eu- rope until the time of Charlemagne. That monarch greatly encouraged the art in France, and as England became more settled in its government, horticidture might be expected to revive with the other occupations of peace; yet our Saxon ancestors do not seem to have emulated the example of their French neighbours. We know they had their herb-gardens, whence our term orchard, and the existence of one apple- garden is noticed in Domesday; it was at Nottingham : hortij and hortidi, gardens, or little gardens, are frequently men- tioned also in that record. It must be admitted, however, that little or nothing is known of the state of horticulture in this country prior to the Norman invasion : and when, after that event, we begin to find traces of horticultural knowledge among monastic writers, it is evident from the names applied to various fruits that France had the honom* to supply those which were held in most esteem, during the tAvelfth and thir- teenth centuries. The late Mr. Loudon divided the history of ofardenino; iu France into three eras ; and from the time of Charlemagne in the eighth, he falls to the period of Louis XIV. in the seventeenth century^ ; supposing, it may be presumed, that the intervening period was unmarked by any progress; however this may have been, the names of many of the fruits grown in England during that time clearly prove their French origin. Excepting a notice in William of Malmesbury relative to the culture of the vine in England, particularly in Gloucester- shire, the earliest English author who has treated of horticul- ture, and that only incidentally, is Alexander Necham, the learned master of the grammar school of St. Alban's, at the close of the twelfth century, and afterwards abbat of Ciren- cester. He was born about the year 1157 and died in 1217. Kis valuable, comparatively unknown, and as yet unpublished, work " de Naturis RerumV' is a sort of common-place book, wherein he entered under various heads the gleanings of his secular and theological reading ; but as much of that reading in matters ap[)ertaining to natiu'al history was limited to Sohnus.and Isidore, his observations must be received with e Encycl. of Gardening, p. 80, ed. 18.35. teenth century. Mr. Loudon does not appear to have known 'There are numerous MS. copies of the valuable work of Oliver de Serres, this work ; several are in the British Mu- which fully illustrates the state of garden- seum, principally in the Royal CoUec- ing iu France at the close of the six- tion.