In ‘The English Gardener’ (1683) and ‘The Dutch Gardener’ (1703) many instructions are given as to the manner of treating plants with special regard to the phases of the Moon; and Rapin, in his poem on Gardens, has the following lines:—
“If you with flow’rs would stock the pregnant earth,
Mark well the Moon propitious to their birth:
For earth the silent midnight queen obeys,
And waits her course, who, clad in silver rays,
Th’ eternal round of times and seasons guides,
Controls the air, and o’er the winds presides.
Four days expir’d you have your time to sow,
Till to the full th’ increasing Moon shall grow;
This past, your labour you in vain bestow: