Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/268

 Chap. VII. O F MAN'C HESTE R. 23? flower-garden muft have been little cultivated at firft. The few native flowers of the ifland were eafily collected as they chec-s kered the lkirts of our woods cur painted the (lopes of our hills, and were tranflated into the irregular flower-plots of the Man- cunian garden. But the kitchen-garden and the orchard muft have been more carefully attended. The wild fruits and the woodland vegetables* which had frequently afforded an occa- fional repaft to the hungry hunter or the ftraying traveller,, were now carefully gathered and tranfplanted into the precinfts of the town. The carrot Ihoots naturally wild in Britain and in France, was originally imported into Italy from the latter, and is only altered by manure and meliorated by care * The turnip was particularly ufed in Gaul, and was even difpenfed a$ a food to the Gallic cattle in winter ", an application of roots which has been vainly efteemed the refult of modern ge* nius, and which is really one of the gredteft improvements of modern agriculture- . - > The rabbet was not yet an inhabitant of the ifland " m But the hare had always been. This animal the Britons made ufe erf for the purpofes of divination w. This ani* mal the Britons never lulled for tht table **• Btit* -for the delight which th.ey took in the breeding of thertj, ifhey- fcepr numbers about the courts of their chiefs ^. The fame numbers they muft therefore have bred about the 'new-erefted villas oF ^fancunium. And the idea .of a hare- warren and the model of a park muft have been originally derived Troti? the prima?vaUftriton&~ The boar muft have ibeen often purfiied into the tolls, hav6 been removed alive to the farm-tloufe, and hatfe 'beebme a. ferviceable animal for the ufes of thetable. The'Siftufttian muft now at leaft have done what the Britons of the ibuth had cer- tainly done before* have drawn down the* fa vage from its native mountains, and have converted the wild ranger of the woods into the peaceful inhabitant of the farn*.yatxL And tfhe Siftwi- tians.muft now have done more, as the "Britons of the fbutk certainly had *°, and feilzing the infant brood of the boar in ite isn % and transferring them to the effeminating -diet and tk* doxaefti- .v