peach-tree on the stock of a nut-tree. Also a peach-tree shall bring forth pomegranates, if it be sprong (sprinkled) oft times with goat’s milk three days when it beginneth to flower. Also the apples of a peach-tree shall wax red, if its scion be grafted on a playne tree.” Such were the intellectual vagaries of “superstitious eld.” Peaches are frequently mentioned among the fruit of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; but nectarines or apricots are not met with before the fifteenth century. The latter were called in old English by their French name of _abricots_, and subsequently, and still more frequently, apricocks. CHAPTER XIV. AMUSEMENTS.--PERFORMING BEARS.--HAWKING AND HUNTING.--RIDING.--CARRIAGES.--TRAVELLING.--INNS AND TAVERNS.--HOSPITALITY. During the period of which we are treating, the same rough sports were in vogue among the uneducated classes that had existed for ages before, and which continued for ages after. Many of these were trials of strength, such as wrestling and throwing weights, with archery, and other exercises of that description; others were of a less civilised character, such as cockfighting and bear and bull-baiting. These latter were favourite amusements, and there was scarcely a town or village of any magnitude which had not its bull-ring. It was a municipal enactment in all towns and cities that no butcher should be allowed to kill a bull until it had been baited. The bear was an animal in great favour in the middle ages, and was not only used for baiting, but was tamed and taught various performances. I have already, in a former chapter, given an example of a dancing bear under the Anglo-Saxons; the accompanying cut (No. 199) is another, taken from a manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Arundel. No. 91). [Illustration: _No. 199. A Dancing-Bear._] I fear the fact cannot be concealed that the ladies of former days assisted not unfrequently at these rough and unfeminine pastimes. There can be no doubt that they were customary spectators of the baiting of bulls and bears. Henry VIII.’s two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, witnessed this coarse amusement, as we are assured by contemporary writers, with great satisfaction. The scene represented in our cut No. 200, which is copied from one of the carved seats, of the fourteenth century, in Gloucester cathedral, is chiefly remarkable for the small degree of energy--the quiet dignity, in fact--displayed by the actors in it. [Illustration: _No. 200. Baiting the Bear._] [Illustration: _No. 201. A Hawk on its Perch._]