Bramble had better be kept out of the
garden, but there are double pink and white-blossomed varieties, and
others with variegated leaves, that are handsome plants on rough
rockwork. The little Rubus saxatilis is a small British Bramble that is
pretty on rockwork, and among the foreign Brambles there are some that
should on no account be omitted where ornamental shrubs are grown. Such
are the R. leucodermis from Nepaul, with its bright silvery bark and
amber-coloured fruit; R. Nootkanus, with very handsome foliage, and pure
white rose-like flowers; R. Arcticus, an excellent rockwork plant from
Northern Europe, with very pleasant fruit, but difficult to establish;
R. Australis (from New Zealand), a most quaint plant, with leaves so
depauperated that it is apparently leafless, and hardy in the South of
England; and R. deliciosus, a very handsome plant from the Rocky
Mountains. There are several others well worth growing, but I mention
these few to show that the Bramble is not altogether such a villainous
and useless weed as it is proverbially supposed to be.

FOOTNOTES:

[37:1] _See_ RAISINS, p. 238.

BOX.

_Maria._ Get ye all three into the Box tree.

_Twelfth Night_, act ii, sc. 5 (18).

The Box is a native British tree, and in the sixteenth century was
probably much more abundant as a wild tree than it is now. Chaucer notes
it as a dismal tree. He describes Palamon in his misery as--

"Like was he to byholde,
The Boxe tree or the Asschen deed and colde."

_The Knightes Tale._

Spenser noted it as "The Box yet mindful of his olde offence," and in
Shakespeare's time there were probably more woods of Box in England than
the two which still remain at Box Hill, in Surrey, and Boxwell, in
Gloucestershire. The name remains, though the trees are gone, in Box in
Wilts, Boxgrove, Boxley, Boxmoor, Boxted, and Boxworth.[39:1] From its
wild quarters the Box tree was very early brought into gardens, and was
especially valued, not only for its rich evergreen colour, but because,
with the Yew, it could be cut and tortured into all the ungainly shapes
which so delighted our ancestors in Shakespeare's time, though one of
the most illustrious of them, Lord Bacon, entered his protest against
such barbarisms: "I, for my part, do not like images cut out in Juniper
or other garden stuff; they be for children" ("Essay of Gard