NATURAL HISTORY. CENTURY VI. Experiments in consort touching curiosities about fruits and plants. Our experiments we take care to be, as we have often said, either experimenta fructifera, or lucifera; either of use, or of discovery: for we hate impostures, and despise curiosities. Yet because we must apply ourselves somewhat to others, we will set down some curiosities touching plants. 501. It is a curiosity to have several fruits upon one tree; and the more, when some of them come early, and some come late ; so that you may have upon the same tree ripe fruits all summer. This is easily done by grafting of several cions upon several boughs, of a stock, in a good ground plentifully fed. So you may have all kinds of cherries, and all kinds of plums, and peaches, and apricots, upon one tree; but I conceive the diversity of fruits must be such as will graft upon the same stock. And therefore I doubt, whether you can have apples, or pears, or oranges, upon the same stock upon which you graft plums. 502. It is a curiosity to have fruits of divers shapes and figures. This is easily performed, by molding them when the fruit is young, with molds of earth or wood. So you may have cucumbers, etc. as long as a cane; or as round as a sphere; or formed like a cross. You may have also apples in the form of pears or lemons. You may have also fruit in more accurate figures, as we said, of men, beasts, or birds, according as you make the molds. Wherein you must understand, that you make the mold big enough to contain the whole fruit when it is grown to the greatest: for else you will choke the spreading of a the fruit; which otherwise would spread itself, and fill the concave, and so be turned into the shape desired; as it is in mold works of liquid things. Some doubt may be conceived, that the keeping of the sun from the fruit may hurt it: but there is ordinary experience of fruit that groweth covered. Query, also, whether some small holes may not be made in the wood to let in the sun. And note, that it were best to make the molds partible, glued, or cemented together, that you may open them when you take out the fruit. 503. It is a curiosity to have inscriptions, or engravings, in fruit or trees. This is easily performed, by writing with a needle, or bodkin, or knife, or the like, when the fruit or trees are young; for as they grow, so the letters will grow more large and graphical Tenerisque meos incidere amores Arboribus; crescent illa, crescetis amores. 504. You may have trees apparelled with flowers or herbs, by boring holes in the bodies of them, and putting into them earth holpen with muck, and setting seeds, or slips, of violets, strawberries, wild thyme, camomile, and such like, in the earth. Wherein they do but grow in the tree as they do in pots; though, perhaps, with some feeding from the trees. It would be tried also with shoots of vines, and roots of red roses; for it may be they being of a more ligneous nature, will incorporate with the tree itself. 505. It is an ordinary curiosity to form trees and shrubs, as rosemary, juniper, and the like, into sundry shapes; which is done by molding them within, and cutting them without. But they are but lame things, being too small to keep figure; great castles made of trees upon frames of timber, with turrets and arches, were matters of magnificence. 506. Amongst curiosities I shall place coloration, though it be somewhat better; for beauty in flowers is their pre-eminence. It is observed by some, that gilly-flowers, sweet-williams, violets, that are coloured, if they be neglected, and neither watered, nor new molded, nor transplanted, will turn white. · And it is probable that the white with much culture may turn coloured. For this is certain, that the white colour cometh of scarcity of nourishment; except in flowers that are only white, and admit no other colours. 507. It is good therefore to see what natures do accompany what colours ; for by that you shall have . light how to induce colours, by producing those natures. Whites are more inodorate, for the most part, than flowers of the same kind coloured ; as is found in single white violets, white roses, white gillyflowers, white stock-gilly-flowers, etc. We find also that blossoms of trees, that are white, are commonly inodorate, as cherries, pears, plums; whereas those apples, crabs, almonds, and peaches, are blushy, and smell sweet. The cause is, for that the substance that maketh the flower is of the thinnest and finest of the plant, which also maketh flowers to be of so dainty colours. And if it be too sparing and thin, it attaineth no strength of odour, except it be in such plants as are very succulent; whereby they need rather to be scanted in their nourishment than replenished, to have them sweet. As we see in white satyrion, which is of a dainty smell; and in beanflowers, etc. And again, if the plant be of nature to put forth white flowers only, and those not thin or dry, they are commonly of rank and fulsome smell ; as may-flowers, and white lilies. 508. CONTRARIWISE, in berries the white is commonly more delicate and sweet in taste than the coloured, as we see in white grapes, in white rasps, in wbite strawberries, in white currants, &c. The cause is, for that the coloured are more juiced, and coarser juiced, and therefore not so well and equally concocted; but the white are better proportioned to the digestion of the plant. 509. But in fruits the white commonly is meaner: as in pear-plums, damascenes, etc. and the choicest plums are black; the mulberry, which though they call it a berry, is a fruit, is better the black than the a VOL. I. 2 E white. The harvest white plum is a base plum; and the verdoccio, and white date-plum, are no very good plums. The cause is, for that they are all over-watery; whereas a higher concoction is required for sweetness, or pleasure of taste; and therefore all your dainty plums are a little dry, and come from the stone; as the muscle-plum, the damascene-plum, the peach, the apricot, etc. yet some fruits, which grow not to be black, are of the nature of berries, sweetest such as are paler; as the cœur-cherry, which inclineth more to white, is sweeter than the red; but the egriot is more sour. 510. TAKE gilly-flower seed, of one kind of gillyflower, as of the clove-gilly-flower, which is the most common, and sow it, and there will come up gillyflowers, some of one colour, and some of another, casually, as the seed meeteth with nourishment in the earth; so that the gardeners find, that they may have two or three roots amongst a hundred that are rare and of great price; as purple, carnation of several stripes: the cause is, no doubt, that in earth, though it be contiguous, and in one bed, there are very several juices; and as the seed doth casually meet with them, so it cometh forth. And it is noted especially, that those which do come up purple, do always come up single: the juice, as it seemeth, not being able to suffice a succulent colour, and a double leaf. This experiment of several colours coming up from one seed, would be tried also in larks-foot, monks-hood, poppy, and holyoak. 511. Few fruits are coloured red within : the queen-apple is; and another apple, called the roseapple : mulberries, likewise, and grapes, though most toward the skin. There is a peach also that hath a circle of red towards the stone and the egriot cherry is somewhat red within ; but no pear, nor warden, nor plum, nor apricot, although they have many times red sides, are coloured red within. The cause may be inquired. 512. The general colour of plants is green, which is a colour that no flower is of. There is a greenish a a primrose, but it is pale, and scarce a green. The leaves of some trees turn a little murry or reddish ; and they be commonly young leaves that do so; as it is in oaks, and vines, and hazle. Leaves rot into a yellow, and some hollies have part of their leaves yellow, that are, to all seeming, as fresh and shining as the green. I suppose also, that yellow is a less suc . culent colour than green, and a degree nearer white. For it hath been noted, that those yellow leaves of holly stand ever towards the north or north-east. Some roots are yellow, as carrots; and some plants blood-red, stalk and leaf, and all, as amaranthus. Some herbs incline to purple and red; as a kind of sage doth, and a kind of mint, and rosa solis, etc. And some have white leaves, as another kind of sage, and another kind of mint; but azure and a fair purple are never found in leaves. This sheweth, that flowers are made of a refined juice of the earth, and so are fruits; but leaves of a more coarse and common. 513. It is a curiosity also to make flowers double, which is effected by often removing them into new earth ; as, on the contrary part, double flowers, by neglecting and not removing, prove single. And the way to do it speedily, is to sow or set seeds or slips of flowers; and as soon as they come up, to remove them into new ground that is good. Inquire also, whether inoculating of flowers, as stock-gilly-flowers, roses, musk-roses, etc. doth not make them double. There is a cherry-tree that hath double blossoms; but that tree beareth no fruit: and it may be, that the same means which, applied to the tree, doth extremely accelerate the sap to rise and break forth, would make the tree spend itself in flowers, and those to become double: which were a great pleasure to see, especially in apple-trees, peach-trees, and almond-trees, that have blossoms blush-coloured. 514. The making of fruits without core or stone, is likewise a curiosity, and somewhat better : because a whatsoever maketh them so, is like to make them more tender and delicate. If a cion or shoot, fit to be set in the ground, have the pith finely taken forth, |