5 (5).

(3) _King._

His plausive words
He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, act i, sc. 2 (53).

(4) _Perdita._

The fairest flowers o' the season
Are our Carnations and streak'd Gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; I care not
To get slips of them.

_Polixenes._

Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?

_Perdita._
For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating Nature.

_Polixenes._

Say there be;
Yet Nature is made better by no mean,
But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentle scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.

_Perdita._

So it is.

_Polixenes._

Then make your garden rich in Gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.

_Perdita._

I'll not put
The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them.

_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (81).

The various ways of propagating plants by grafts, cuttings, slips, and
artificial impregnation (all mentioned in the above passages), as used
in Shakespeare's day, seem to have been exactly like those of our own
time, and so they need no further comment.

FOOTNOTES:

[353:1] The Act 31 Eliz. c. 7, enacts that "noe person shall within this
Realme of England make buylde or erect any Buyldinge or Howsinge . . . .
as a Cottage for habitation . . . . unlesse the same person do assigne
and laye to the same Cottage or Buyldinge fower acres of Grounde at the
least . . . to be contynuallie occupied and manured therewith." Gerard's
Chapter on Vines is headed, "Of the manured Vine."

V.--GARDEN ENEMIES.

A. WEEDS.

(1) _Hamlet._

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fye on it, ah fye! 'tis an unweeded garden
That gr