they had gotten their perfect
cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he
remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full
maturities."

These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work,
entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates,
in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new
matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth,
moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust,
soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends
him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers,
is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."[8]

[Footnote 8: This is not mentioned either by Felton in his _Portraits_,
etc., or by Johnson in his _History of Gardening_. Donaldson gives the
title, and the headings of the chapters.]

In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which,
notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century[9] as a
new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively
in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of
Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and
improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed,
proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before
unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy
of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh,
in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the
corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the
new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes
and covering the grain.

[Footnote 9: See Young, _Annals of Agriculture_, Vol. III. p. 219, _et
seq._]

I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by
giving his own _envoi_ to the most considerable of his books:--"Thus,
gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and
laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary
conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by
the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of
Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without
her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some
encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereaf