arth"--but her angry grief may account for that. Parkinson also has not
much to say in favour of the gardeners of his day, but considers it his
duty to warn his readers against them: "Our English gardeners are all,
or the most of them, utterly ignorant in the ordering of their
outlandish (_i.e._, exotic) flowers as not being trained to know
them. . . . And I do wish all gentlemen and gentlewomen, whom it may
concern for their own good, to be as careful whom they trust with the
planting and replanting of their fine flowers, as they would be with so
many jewels, for the roots of many of them being small and of great
value may soon be conveyed away, and a clean tale fair told, that such a
root is rotten or perished in the ground if none be seen where it should
be, or else that the flower hath changed his colour when it hath been
taken away, or a counterfeit one hath been put in the place thereof; and
thus many have been deceived of their daintiest flowers, without remedy
or true knowledge of the defect." And again, "idle and ignorant
gardeners who get names by stealth as they do many other things." This
is not a pleasant picture either of the skill or honesty of the
sixteenth-century gardeners, but there must have been skilled gardeners
to keep those curious-knotted gardens in order, so as to have a "_ver
perpetuum_ all the year." And there must have been men also who had a
love for their craft; and if some stole the rare plants committed to
their charge, we must hope that there were some honest men amongst them,
and that they were not all like old Andrew Fairservice, in "Rob Roy,"
who wished to find a place where he "wad hear pure doctrine, and hae a
free cow's grass, and a cot and a yard, and mair than ten punds of
annual fee," but added also, "and where there's nae leddy about the town
to count the Apples."

IV.--GARDENING OPERATIONS.

A. PRUNING, ETC.

(1) _Orlando._

But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and industry.

_As you Like It_, act ii, sc. 3 (63).

(2) _Gardener._

Go, bind thou up yon dangling Apricocks,
Which, like unruly children, make their sire
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight:
Give some supportance to the bending twigs.
Go thou, and like an executioner,
Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays,
That look too lo