PEARS.—Of these the Romans had many sorts, both Summer and Winter Fruit, melting and hard; they had more than thirty six kinds, some were called _Libralia_. We have our Pound Pear. [Pliny mentions twenty kinds of this fruit, and Virgil five or six. Ælian describing the most ancient food of several nations, reports that at Argos they fed chiefly upon Pears. Tusser, states that “Pears of all sorts” were cultivated here in his time. The Arms of Wardon Abbey, in Bedfordshire, as given by Tanner, are Argent, Three Pears, Or.—Quere, if these are the species called Wardons, or if they are peculiar to that part of England. The Wardon Pear is common in Yorkshire.] PLUMS.—The Romans had a multiplicity of sorts (_ingens turba prunorum_) black, white, and variegated; one sort was called _asinia_, from its cheapness; another _damascena_; this had much stone and little flesh: from Martial’s Epigram, xiii. 29, we may conclude that it was what we now call prunes. [The Plum is generally supposed to be a native of Asia, and the Damascene (Damson) to take its name from Damascus, a city of Syria. Tusser enumerates in his list of fruits “Grene or Grass Plums, and Peer Plums, black and yellow.” Lord Cromwell introduced the Perdrigon Plum in the Reign of Henry the seventh.] QUINCES.—The Romans had three sorts, one was called _Chrysomela_, from its yellow flesh. They boiled them with honey as we make marmalade. See Martial, xiii. 24. [The Quince is called Cydonia, from Cydon, a town of Crete, famous for this fruit.—Tusser mentions it among his fruit-trees, and Gerard says it was cultivated here in his time.] SERVICES.—They had the Apple-shaped, the Pear-shaped, and a small kind, probably the same that we gather wild, the Azarole. [There are three sorts of the Service Tree cultivated in England, namely the cultivated Service; the Wild Service or Mountain Ash; and the Maple leaved Service. The first is a native of the warmer climes of Europe; and the other two grow wild in different parts of England.] STRAWBERRIES.—The Romans had Strawberries, but do not appear to have prized them. The climate is too warm to produce this fruit in perfection unless in the hills. [Tusser enumerates Strawberries, red and white, as being cultivated when he wrote.] VINES.—The Romans had a multiplicity of Vines, both thick-skinned, (_duracina_,) and thin-skinned: one Vine growing at Rome produced 12 Amphoræ of juice, equal to 84 gallons. They had round-berried, and long-berried sorts, one so long that it was called _dactilydes_, the grapes being like the fingers on the hand. Martial (xiii. 22.) speaks favourably of the hard-skinned grape for eating. [In Domesday Book, (1. p. 8. col 1.) there are said to be in the Bishop of Bayeux’s Manor of _Chert_, in the county of Kent, three arpents of _Vineyard_, and in the Manor of Leeds (1. p. 7. col. 4.) belonging to the same Bishop, two Arpents of _Vineyard_.