fruit and flowers all the year round, both appearing at the same time. The flowers have a delicious smell; the candied petals impart a very fine flavour to tea, if a few of them are infused with it; whilst the fruit may be preserved in exactly the same manner as other fruit. The sign of the orange-tree still occurs at Highgate, Birmingham; the LEMON TREE at Beacon Street, Lichfield. The OLIVE TREE was a common Italian warehouse sign, but was occasionally used by other shops. Amongst the tokens in the Beaufoy Collection, there is the “Olfa Tree, Singon Strete,” an example of the liberties taken with our language on the old tokens, as this stands for the Olive Tree in St John’s Street. The usefulness of the olive tree made it in very early times a symbol of peace. In 1503 it was the sign of Henry Estienne, a bookseller and printer at the end of the Rue de St Jean Beauvais, otherwise Clos Bruneau, in Paris. This firm, for several generations, continued the leading publishers and printers in Paris. Sauval, who wrote in 1650, says that in his time the olive tree, carved in stone, was still to be seen in the front of the house. Here Francis I., in 1539, visited Robert Estienne, grandson of the founder of the firm, in his workshops; and to give him a proof of his favour, conferred upon him the title of Printer to the King for Latin and Hebrew; and presented him with those beautiful letters which Estienne proudly mentions on his title-pages: “Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi regii, _typis regiis_.” The VINE, or the BUNCH OF GRAPES, is a very natural sign at a place where wine is sold. The last particularly was almost inseparable from every tavern, and was often combined with other objects-- “Without there hangs a noble sign, Where golden grapes in image shine; To crown the bush, a little Punch- Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch, Sits loftily enthron’d upon What’s called (in miniature) a Tun.” _Compleat Vintner_: London, 1720, p. 86. The BUNCH OF CARROTS, at Hampton Bishop, Hereford, is probably meant as a joke upon the Bunch of Grapes. Bagford, in a letter to his brother antiquary, Leland,[348] says:-- “I have often thought, and am now fully perswaded, that the planting of vines in the adjacent parts about this city, was first of all begun by the Romans, an industrious people, and famous for their skill in agriculture and gardening, as may appear from their _rei agrariæ scriptores_, as well as from Pliny and other authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden, (which at this time is called Vine Street,) and a third in St Giles-in-the-Fields.[349] Many places in the country bear the name of the Vineyard to this day, especially in the ancient monasteries, as Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c., which were left as such by the Romans.”