which no one could better: "Leonard Mascall, of Plumsted in this county, being much delighted in Gardening, man's Original vocation, was the first who brought over into England, from beyond the seas, Carps and Pippins; the one, well-cook'd, delicious, the other cordial and restorative. For the proof hereof, we have his own word and witness; and did it, it seems, about the Fifth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, Anno Dom. 1514. The time of his death is to me unknown." The credit of introducing carps and pippins has, however, been denied to Mascall, who died in 1589 at Farnham Royal in Buckinghamshire, where he was buried; but we know him beyond question to have been an ingenious experimentalist in horticulture. He wrote and translated several books, among them a treatise on the orchard by a monk of the Abbey of St. Vincent in France: A Book of the Arte of and Manner howe to plant and graffe all sortes of trees, howe to set stones, and sowe Pepines to make wylde trees to graffe on, 1572. I take a few passages from a later edition of this work:
To Colour Apples.
To have coloured Apples with what colour ye shall think good ye shall bore or slope a hole with an Auger in the biggest part of the body of the tree, unto the midst thereof, or thereabouts, and then look what colour ye will have them of. First ye shall take water and mingle your colour therewith, then stop it up again with a short pin made of the same wood or tree, then wax it round about. Ye may mingle with the said colour what spice ye list, to make them taste thereafter. Thus may ye change the colour and taste of any Apple.... This must be done before the Spring do come....
To Make Apples Fall From the Tree.
If ye put fiery coles under an Apple tree, and then cast off the powder of Brimstone therein, and the fume thereof ascend up, and touch an Apple that is wet, that Apple shall fall incontinant.
