The processes of gardening were simple and easy, and the gardener’s skill consisted chiefly in the knowledge of the seasons for sowing and planting different herbs and trees, and of the astrological circumstances under which these processes could be performed most advantageously. The great ambition of the mediæval horticulturist was to excel in the various mysteries of grafting, and he entertained theories on this subject of the most visionary character, many of which were founded on the writings of the ancients; for the mediæval theories were accustomed to select from the doctrines of antiquity that which was most visionary, and it usually became still more visionary in their hands. Two English treatises on gardening were current in the fifteenth century, one founded upon the Latin treatise of Palladius, and entitled “Godfrey upon Palladie de Agricultura,” the other by Nicholas Bollarde, a monk of Westminster--the monks were great gardeners. These treatises occur not unfrequently in manuscripts, and both are found in the British Museum, in the Sloane MS., No. 7. An abridgment of them was edited by Mr. Halliwell, from the Porkington manuscript, in a collection of “Early English Miscellanies,” printed for the Warton Club. In these treatises, cherry-trees appear to have been more than any others the subjects of experiment, and to have been favourite stocks for grafting. Among the receipts given in these treatises we may mention those for making cherries grow without stones, and other fruit without cores; for making the fruit of trees bear any colour you like; for making old trees young; for making sour fruit sweet; and “to have grapes ripe as soon as pears or cherries.” This was to be brought about by grafting the vine on a cherry-tree, according to the following directions, the spelling of which I modernise:--“Set a vine by a cherry till it grow, and at the beginning of February when time is, make a hole through the cherry-tree at what height thou wilt, and draw through the vine branch so that it fill the hole, and shave away the old bark of the vine as much as shall be in the hole, and put it in so that the part shaven fill the hole full, and let it stand a year till they be ‘souded’ together, then cut away the root end of the vine, and lap it with clay round about, and keep it so after other graftings aforesaid.” This is from Nicholas Bollarde. Godfrey upon Palladius tells us how “to have many roses. Take the hard pepins that be right ripe, and sow them in February or March, and when they spring, water them well, and after a year complete thou mayst transplant them; and if thou wilt have timely (early) roses, delve about the roots one or two handbreadths, and water their scions with warm water; and for to keep them long, put them in honeycombs.” According to the receipts edited by Mr. Halliwell, “If thou wilt that in the stone of a peach-apple (this was the ordinary name for a peach) be found a nut-kernel, graft a spring (sprout) of a