“The monks, after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, appear to have been the only gardeners.  As early as 674, we have a record, describing a pleasant and fruit-bearing close at Ely, then cultivated by Brithnoth, the first Abbot of that place.  The ecclesiastics subsequently carried their cultivation of fruits as tar as was compatible with the nature of the climate, and the horticultural knowledge of the middle ages.  Whoever has seen an old abbey, where for generations destruction only has been at work, must have almost invariably found it situated in one of the choicest spots, both as to soil and aspect; and if the hand of injudicious improvement has not swept it away, there is still the ‘Abbey-garden.’  Even though it has been wholly neglected—­though its walls be in ruins, covered with stone-crop and wall-flower, and its area produce but the rankest weeds—­there are still the remains of the aged fruit trees—­the venerable pears, the delicate little apples, and the luscious black cherries.  The chestnuts and the walnuts may have yielded to the axe, and the fig trees and vines died away;—­but sometimes the mulberry is left, and the strawberry and the raspberry struggle among the ruins.  There is a moral lesson in these memorials of the monastic ages.  The monks, with all their faults, were generally men of peace and study; and these monuments show that they were improving the world, while the warriors were spending their lives to spoil it.  In many parts of Italy and France, which had lain in desolation and ruin from the time of the Goths, the monks restored the whole surface to fertility; and in Scotland and Ireland there probably would not have been a fruit tree till the sixteenth century, if it had not been for their peaceful labours.  It is generally supposed that the monastic orchards were in their greatest perfection from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.”

Again, the

NATURALIZATION OF PLANTS.

“The large number of our native plants (for we call those native which have adapted themselves to our climate) mark the gradual progress of our civilization through the long period of two thousand years; whilst the almost infinite diversity of exotics which a botanical garden offers, attest the triumphs of that industry which has carried us as merchants or as colonists over every region of the earth, and has brought from every region whatever can administer to our comforts and our luxuries,—­to the tastes and the needful desires of the humblest as well as the highest amongst us.  To the same commerce we owe the potato and the pine-apple; the China rose, whose flowers cluster round the cottage-porch, and the Camellia which blooms in the conservatory.  The addition even of a flower, or an ornamental shrub, to those which we already possess, is not to be regarded as a matter below the care of industry and science.  The more we extend our acquaintance with the productions of nature, the more are our minds elevated by contemplating the variety,