; a complaint that
has been common in all ages. Contrary to what is the practice to-day,
and apparently to common sense, the surveyor recommends that open
drains be made as narrow above as at the bottom, at the most not more
than a foot and a half broad.[287] Hops, he says, were then grown in
Suffolk, Essex, and Surrey, 'in your loose and spongie grounds,
trenched.' 'Carret' roots were raised in Suffolk and Essex, and
beginning to increase in all parts of the realm[288]; but if he
alludes to their cultivation in the open field the statement must be
taken with considerable qualification, as they were not so grown
generally until the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of
the next.

Kent was then, as now, the great fruit county of England; 'above all
others I think the Kentishmen be most apt and industrious in planting
orchards with pippins and cherries, especially near the Thames about
Feversham and Sittingbourne.' But Devon and Hereford were also famous;
Westcote about 1630 says the Devonshire men had of late much enlarged
their orchards, and 'are very curious in planting and grafting all
kinds of fruit'[289]; and John Beale in 1656 tells us Hereford 'is
reputed the orchard of England'[290]; while Hartlib says there were
many orchards in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.[291] He calls
'Tandeane' near Taunton the Paradise of England, where the husbandry
was excellent, the land fruitful by nature and improved by the art and
industry of the farmers; 'they take extraordinary pains in soyling,
ploughing, and dressing their lands, and after the plow there goeth
some three or four with mattocks to break the clods and to draw up the
earth out of the furrows that the lands may lye round, and that the
water annoy not the seed (the water evidently often lying long in the
furrows between the great high ridges), and to that end they most
carefully cut gutters and trenches in all places. And for the better
enriching of their ploughing lands they cut up, cast, and carry in the
unplowed headlands and places of no use. Their hearts, hands, eyes,
and all their powers concurre in one to force the earth to yield her
utmost fruit; and the crops of wheat that rewarded this industry were
sometimes 8 and 10 quarters to an acre.

A short pamphlet called the _Fruiterer's Secrets_, published in London
in 1604, imparts some interesting and curious information about fruit
growing.[292] There were then four sorts of cherries in Englan