15. c. 23. from this natural guard, concludes them to be excellent food,
and doubtless Cæsar thought so, when he transported them from Sardis
first into Italy, whence they were propagated into France, and thence
among us; another encouragement to make such experiments out of foreign
countries. Some sow them confusedly in the furrow like the acorn, and
govern them as the oak; but then would the ground be broken up ’twixt
November and February; and when they spring, be clensed, and thinn’d two
foot asunder, after two years growth: Likewise may copses of chesnuts be
wonderfully increased and thickned, by laying the tender and young
branches; but such as spring from the nuts and marrons, are best of all,
and will thrive exceedingly, if (being let stand without removing) the
ground be stirr’d, and loosened about their roots, for two or three of
the first years, and the superfluous wood prun’d away; and indeed for
good trees, they should be shrip’d up after the first year’s removal;
they also shoot into gallant poles from a felled stem: Thus will you
have a copse ready for a felling, within eight years, which (besides
many other uses) will yield you incomparable poles for any work of the
garden, vineyard or hopyard, till the next cutting: And if the tree like
the ground, will in ten or twelve years grow to a kind of timber, and
bear plentiful fruit.

3. I have seen many chesnut-trees transplanted as big as my arm, their
heads cut off at five and six foot height; but they came on at leisure:
In such plantations, and all others for avenues, you may set them from
thirty to ten foot distance, though they will grow much nearer, and
shoot into poles, if (being tender) you cultivate them like the ash, the
nature of whose shade it resembles, since nothing affects much to grow
under it: Some husbands tell me, that the young chesnut-trees should not
be pruned or touched with any knife or edge-tool, for the first three or
four years, but rather cropp’d or broken off, which I leave to farther
experience; however, many forbear to top them, when they transplant.

4. The chesnut being graffed in the wallnut, oak, or beech, (I have
been told) will come exceeding fair, and produce incomparable fruit; for
the wallnut, and chesnut in each other, it is probable; but I have not
as yet made a full attempt; they also speak of inoculating cherries in
the chesnut-stock for a later fruit. In the mean time, I wish we did
more universally propagate the horse-chesnut, which being easily
increas’d from layers, grows into a good standard, and bears a most
glorious flower, even in our cold country: This tree (so call’d, for the
cure of horses broken-winded, and other cattel of coughs) is now all the
mode for the avenues to their countrey palaces in France, as appears by
the late Superintendent’s plantation at Vaux. It was first brought from
Constantinople to Vienna, thence into Italy, and so France; but to us
from the Levant more immediately, and flourishes so well, and grows so
goodly a tree in competent time, that by this alone, we might have ample
encouragement to denizen other strangers amongst us. One inconvenience
to which this beautiful tree is obnoxious, is that it does not well
resist impetuous and stormy winds, without damage.

5. The chesnut is (next the oak) one of the most sought after by the
carpenter and joyner: It hath formerly built a good part of our ancient
houses in the city of London, as does yet appear. I had once a very
large barn near the city, fram’d intirely of this timber: And certainly
they grew not far off; probably in some woods near the town: For in that
description of London, written by Fitz-Stephens, in the reign of Hen.
II. he speaks of a very noble and large forest which grew on the Boreal
part of it; _proxime_ (says he) _patet foresta ingens, saltus nemorosi
ferarum, latebræ cervorum, damarum, aprorum, & taurorum silvestrium,
&c._ A very goodly thing it seems, and as well stor’d with all sorts of
good timber, as with venison and all kind of chase; and yet some will
not allow it a free-born of this island; but of that I make little
doubt. The chesnut affords the best stakes and poles for palisades,
pedament for vine-props and hops, as I said before: Also for mill-timber
and water-works, or when it may lie buried; but if water touch the roots
of the growing trees, it spoils both fruit and timber: ’Tis likewise
observed, that this tree is so prevalent against cold, that where they
stand, they defend other plantations from the injuries of the severest
frosts: I am sure being planted in hedge-rows, & _circa agrorum
itinera_, or for avenues to our country-houses, they are a magnificent
and royal ornament. This timber also does well (if kept dry) for
columns, tables, chests, chairs, stools, bedsteads; for tubs, and
wine-casks, which it preserves with the least tincture of the wood of
any whatsoever: If the timber be dipp’d in scalding oyl, and well
pitch’d, it becomes extreamly durable; but otherwise I cannot celebrate
the tree for its sincerity, it being found that (contrary to the oak) it
will make a fair shew outwardly, when ’tis all decay’d, and rotten
within; but this is in some sort recompenc’d, if it be true, that the
beams made of chesnut-tree have this property, that being somewhat
brittle, they give warning, and premonish the danger by a certain
crackling which it makes; so as ’tis said to have frighted those out of
the Baths at Antandro, whose roof was laid with this material; but which
Pliny says, was of hazle, very unlike it. Formerly they made
consultatory staves of this tree; and the variegated rods which Jacob
peel’d to lay in the troughs, and impress a fancy in his
father-in-law’s conceiving ewes, were of this material. The coals are
excellent for the smith, being soon kindled, and as soon extinguisht;
but the ashes of chesnut-wood are not convenient to make a lee with,
because it is observ’d to stain the linnen. As for the fruit, ’tis
better to beat it down from the tree, some little time before they fall
off themselves; thus they will the better keep, or else you must
smoke-dry them. But we give that fruit to our swine in England, which is
amongst the delicacies of princes in other countries; and being of the
larger nut, is a lusty and masculine food for rusticks at all times; and
of better nourishment for husbandmen than coal, and rusty bacon; yea, or
beans to boot, instead of which, they boil them in Italy with their
bacon; and in Virgil’s time, they eat them with milk and cheese. The
best tables in France and Italy make them a service, eating them with
salt, in wine, or juice of lemmon and sugar; being first roasted in
embers on the chaplet; and doubtless we might propagate their use
amongst our common people, (as of old the Βαλανοφάγοι) being a food
so cheap, and so lasting. In Italy they also boil them in wine, and then
smoke them a little; these they call _anseri_ or geese, I know not why:
Those of Piemont add fennel, cinnamon and nutmeg to their wine, if in
water, mollify them with the vapour only; but first they peel them.
Others macerate them in rose-water. The bread of the flower is exceeding
nutritive; ’tis a robust food, and makes women well complexion’d, as I
have read in a good author: They also make fritters of chesnut-flower,
which they wet with rose-water, and sprinkle with grated _parmegiano_,
and so fry them in fresh butter, a delicate: How we here use them in
stew’d-meats, and beatille-pies, our French-cooks teach us; and this is
in truth the very best use of their fruit, and very commendable; for it
is found that the eating of them raw, or in bread (as they do much about
Limosin) is apt to swell the belly, though without any other
inconvenience that I can learn, and yet some condemn them as dangerous
for such as are subject to the gravel in the kidneys, and however cook’d
and prepar’d, flatulent, offensive to the head and stomach, and those
who are subject to the cholick. The best way to preserve them, is to
keep them in earthen vessels in a cold place; some lay them in a
smoke-loft, others in dry barly-straw, others in sand, &c. The leaves of
the chesnut-tree make very wholsom mattresses to lie on, and they are
good littier for cattel: But those leafy-beds, for the crackling noise
they make when one turns upon them, the French call _licts de
Parliament_: Lastly, the flower of chesnuts made into an electuary, and
eaten with hony fasting, is an approved remedy against spitting blood,
and the cough; and a decoction of the rind of the tree, tinctures hair
of a golden colour, esteem’d a beauty in some countries: Other species,
v. Ray, _Dendrolog._ T. III, &c.

CHAPTER IX.

_Of the Wallnut._

1. _Juglans, quasi Jovis glans_, the{101:1} wall or welch-nut (though no
where growing of it self, some say, in Europe) is of several sorts;
Monsieur Rencaume (of the French Academy) reckons nine; the soft-shell
and the hard, the whiter and the blacker grain: This black bears the
worst nut, but the timber much to be preferred, and we might propagate
more of them if we were careful to procure them out of Virginia, where
they abound and bear a squarer nut, of all other the most beautiful, and
best worth planting; indeed had we store of these, we should soon
despise the rest; yet those of Grenoble come in the next place, and are
much priz’d by our cabinet-makers: In all events, be sure to plant from
young and thriving trees, bearing full and plump kernels. It is said
that the walnut-kernel wrap’d in its own leaf, being carefully taken out
of its shell, brings a nut without shell, but this is a trifle; the best
way to elevate them, is to set them as you do the chesnut, being planted
of the nut, or set at the distance you would have him stand; for which
they may be prepar’d by beating them off the tree (as was prescribed of
the chesnut) some days before they quit the branches of themselves, and
kept in their husks, or without them, till Spring, or by bedding them
(being dry) in sand, or good earth, till March or earlier, from the time
they fell, or were beaten off the tree: Or if before, they be set with
husk and all upon them; for the extream bitterness thereof is most
exitial and deadly to worms; or it were good to strew some furzes
(broken or chopp’d small) under the ground amongst them, to preserve
them from mice and rats, when their shells begin to wax tender;
especially if, as some, you supple them a little in warm cows milk; but
being treated as before, you will find them already sprouted, and have
need only to be planted where they are to abide; because (as we said
long since) they are most impatient of transplanting: But if there be an
absolute necessity of removing, let your tree never be above four years
old, and then by no means touch the head with your knife, nor cut away
so much as the very top-root, being so old, if you can well dispose of
it, since being of a pithy and hollow substance, the least diminution,
or bruise, will greatly endanger the killing: But see here what we have
said of the chesnut. I have been told, that the very tops, and palish
buds of this tree, when it first sprouts, though as late as April, will
take hold of the ground, and grow to an incredible improvement; but
first they steep them in milk and saffron; but this attempt did not
succeed with us, yet it will be propagated by a branch slipp’d off with
some of the old wood, and set in February: An industrious and very
experienc’d husbandman told me, that if they be transplanted as big as
ones middle, it may be done safer than when younger; I do only report
it: What they hint of putting a tile-shard under the nuts when first
set, to divaricate and spread the roots (which are otherwise apt to
penetrate very deep) I like well enough; ’tis certain they will receive
their own cyons being graffed, and that it does improve their fruit.
The best compost is the strewing of ashes at the foot of the trees, the
salt whereof being washed into the earth, is the best dressing, whilst
the juice of the fallen leaves, though it kill the worm, is noxious to
the root. This tree does not refuse to thrive even among others, and in
great woods, provided you shrip up the collateral arms.

2. The walnut delights in a dry, sound and rich land; especially if it
incline to a feeding chalk, or marle; and where it may be protected from
the cold (though it affect cold rather than extream heat) as in great
pits, valleys and high-way sides; also in stony-grounds, if loamy, and
on hills, especially chalky; likewise in corn-fields: Thus Burgundy
abounds with them, where they stand in the midst of goodly wheat-lands,
at sixty, and an hundred foot distance; and it is so far from hurting
the crop, that they look on them as a great preserver, by keeping the
grounds warm; nor do the roots hinder the plow. Whenever they fell a
tree (which is only the old and decayed) they always plant a young one
near him; and in several places twixt Hanaw and Francfort in Germany, no
young farmer whatsoever is permitted to marry a wife, till he bring
proof that he hath planted, and is a father of such a stated number of
walnut-trees, as the law is inviolably observed to this day, for the
extraordinary benefit which this tree affords the inhabitants: And in
truth, were this timber in greater plenty amongst us, we should have far
better utensils of all sorts for our houses, as chairs, stools,
bedsteads, tables, wainscot, cabinets, &c. instead of the more vulgar
beech, subject to the worm, weak, and unsightly; but which to
counterfeit, and deceive the unwary, they wash over with a decoction
made of the green-husks of walnuts, &c. I say, had we store of this
material, especially of the Virginian, we should find an incredible
improvement in the more stable furniture of our houses, as in the first
frugal and better days of Rome, when

    Tables made here at home, those times beheld,
    Of our own wood, for that same purpose fell’d,
    Old walnut blown down, when the wind set east.{104:1}

    Sir R. Stapylton.

For if it had been cut in that season, it would not have prov’d so
sound, as we shew in our chapter of felling. It is certain, that the
_mensæ nucinæ_, were once in price even before the _citrin_, as Strabo
notes; and nothing can be more beautiful than some planks and works
which I have beheld of it, especially that which comes from Grenoble, of
all other the most beautiful and esteemed.

3. They render most graceful avenues to our countrey dwellings, and do
excellently near hedge-rows; but had need be planted, at forty or fifty
foot interval, for they affect to spread both their roots and branches.
The _Bergstras_ (which extends from Heidelberg to Darmstadt) is all
planted with walnuts; for so by another ancient law, the borderers were
obliged to nurse up, and take care of them; and that chiefly, for their
ornament and shade; so as a man may ride for many miles about that
countrey under a continued arbour, or close-walk; the traveller both
refreshed with the fruit and the shade, which some have causelesly
defam’d for its ill effects on the head, for which the fruit is a
specifique and a notable signature; although I deny not, but the scent
of the fallen leaves, when they begin to be damp’d with lying, may emit
somewhat a heady steam, which to some has prov’d noxious; but not whilst
they were fresh, and lively upon the trees. How would such publick
plantations improve the glory and wealth of a nation! But where shall we
find the spirits among our countreymen? Yes, I will adventure to
instance in those plantations of Sir Richard Stidolph, upon the downs
near Lether-head in Surrey; Sir Robert Clayton at Morden near Godstone
(once belonging to Sir John Evelyn) and so about Cassaulton, where many
thousands of these trees do celebrate the industry of the owners, and
will certainly reward it with infinite improvement, as I am assured they
do in part already, and that very considerably; besides the ornament
which they afford to those pleasant tracts, for some miles in
circumference. There was lately (and for ought I know is yet) an avenue
of four leagues in length, and 50 paces breadth, planted with young
oaklings, as strait as a line, from the city of Utrecht to Amersfort,
affording a most goodly prospect; which minds me of what Sorbiere tells
in a sceptical discourse to Monsieur de Martel, speaking of the
readiness of the people in Holland to furnish and maintain whatsoever
may conduce to the publick ornament, as well as convenience; that their
plantations of these and the like trees, even in their very roads and
common highways, are better preserv’d and entertain’d (as I my self have
likewise been often an eye-witness) than those about the houses and
gardens of pleasure belonging to the nobles and gentry of most other
countries: And in effect it is a most ravishing object, to behold their
amenities in this particular: With us, says he (speaking of France) they
make a jest at such political ordinances, by ruining these publick and
useful ornaments, if haply some more prudent magistrate do at any time
introduce them. Thus in the reign of Henry the Fourth, (during the
superintendency of Monsieur de Sulli) there was a resolution of adorning
all the highways of France with elms, &c. but the rude and mischievous
peasants did so hack, steal and destroy what they had begun, that they
were forced to desist from the thorough prosecution of the design; so as
there is nothing more expos’d, wild, and less pleasant than the common
roads of France for want of shade, and the decent limits which these
sweet and divertissant plantations would have afforded. Not to omit that
political use, as my Lord Bacon hints it, where he speaks of the statues
and monuments of brave men, and such as had well deserv’d of the
publick, erected by the Romans even in their highways; since doubtless,
such noble and agreeable objects would exceedingly divert, entertain,
and take off the minds and discourses of melancholy people, and pensive
travellers, who having nothing but the dull and enclosed ways to cast
their eyes on, are but ill conversation to themselves, and others, and
instead of celebrating, censure their superiors. It is by a curious
person, and industrious friend of mine, observ’d, that the sap of this
tree rises and descends with the sun’s diurnal course (which it visibly
slackens in the night) and more plentifully at the root on the south
side, though those roots cut on the north were larger, and less distant
from the body of the tree; and not only distill’d from the ends, which
were next the stem, but from those which were cut off and separated,
which was never observ’d to happen in the birch, or other sap-yielding
trees. {107:1} Mr. Oldenburg speaks of one of the present kings in
Europe, who drinks much of the juice of this tree, and finds great
benefit thereby.

4. What universal use the French make of the timber of this sole tree,
for domestic affairs, may be seen in every room both of poor and rich:
It is of singular account with the joyner, for the best grain’d, and
colour’d wainscot; with the gun-smith for stocks, for coach-wheels
excellent, and the bodies of coaches, (they make hoops and bows with it
in New-England, for want of yew:) The drum-maker uses it for rimbs, the
cabinet-maker for inlayings, especially the firm and close timber about
the roots, which is admirable for fleck’d and chambletted works, some
wood especially, as that which we have from Bologne, New-England and
Virginia, (where they are of three or four sorts, differing in their
leaves, fruit and stature) very black of colour, and so admirably
streaked, as to represent natural flowers, landskips, and other fancies:
To render this the better-coloured, joyners put the boards into an oven
after the batch is forth, or lay them in a warm stable, and when they
work it, polish it over with its own oyl very hot, which makes it look
black and sleek, and the older it is, the more esteemable; but then it
should not be put in work till thoroughly seasoned, because it will
shrink beyond expectation. It is only not good to confide in it much for
beams or joysts, because of its brittleness, of which yet, it has been
observ’d to give timely notice, as also the chesnut, by the crackling
before it breaks. Besides the uses of the wood, the fruit with husk and
all, when tender and very young, is for preserves (condited in separate
decoctions, by our curious ladies) also for food and oyl; of
extraordinary use with the painter, in whites, and other delicate
colours, also for gold-size and varnish; and with this they polish
walking-staves, and other works which are wrought in with burning: For
food they fry with it in some places, and eat it instead of butter, in
Berry, where they have little or none good; and therefore they plant
infinite numbers of these trees all over that countrey: The use of it to
burn in lamps, is common there. The younger timber is held to make the
better-coloured work (and so the oak) but the older more firm and close,
is finer chambleted for ornament; and the very husks and leaves being
macerated in warm water, and that liquor poured on the carpet of walks,
and bowling-greens, does infallibly kill the worms, without endangering
the grass: Not to mention the dye which is made of this lixive, to
colour wooll, woods, and hair, as of old they us’d it. The water of the
husks is sovereign against all pestilential infections, and that of the
leaves to mundifie and heal inveterate ulcers. That which is produced of
the thick-shell, becomes best timber, that of the thinner, better fruit.
Columella has sundry excellent rules how to ascertain and accelerate the
growth of this tree, and to improve its qualities; and I am assur’d,
that having been graffed on the ash (though others say no incision
improves it) it thrives exceedingly, becomes a handsome tree, and what
is most estimable, bears its fruit within four years, all which I
recommend to the farther industrious. The green husk dry’d, or the first
peeping red buds and leaves reduced to powder, serves instead of
pepper, to condite meats and sauces. ’Tis thought better to cudgel off
the fruit, when dropping ripe, than to gather it by hand; and that the
husk may open, lay them by in a dry room, sometimes turning them with a
broom, but without washing, for fear of mouldiness. In Italy they arm
the tops of long poles with nails and iron for the purpose, and believe
the beating improves the tree; which I no more believe, than I do that
discipline would reform a perverse shrew: Those nuts which come not
easily out of their husks, should be laid to mellow in heaps, and the
rest expos’d in the sun, till the shells dry, else they will be apt to
perish the kernel: Some again preserve them in their own leaves, or in a
chest made of walnut-tree wood; others in sand, especially if you will
preserve them for a seminary; do this in October, and keep them a little
moist, that they may spear, to be set early in February: Thus after two
years they may be removed at a yard asunder, cutting the top-root, and
side branches, but sparing the head; and being two yards high, bud, or
remove them immediately. Old nuts are not wholsome till macerated in
warm, and almost boiling water; but if you lay them in a leaden pot, and
bury them in the earth, so as no vermin can attaque them, they will keep
marvellously plump the whole year about, and may easily be blanched: In
Spain they use to strew the gratings of old and hard nuts (first peel’d)
into their tarts and other meats. For the oyl, one bushel of nuts will
yield fifteen pounds of peel’d and clear kernels, and that half as much
oyl, which the sooner ’tis drawn, is the more in quantity, though the
dryer the nut, the better in quality; the lees, or marc of the
pressing, is excellent to fatten hogs with. After the nuts are beaten
down, the leaves would be sweep’d into heaps, and carried away, because
their extreme bitterness impairs the ground, and as I am assured,
prejudices the trees: The green husks boiled, make a good colour to dye
a dark yellow, without any mixture; and the distillation of its leaves
with honey and urine, makes hair spring on baldheads: Besides its use in
the famous Salernitan antidote; if the kernel a little masticated, be
applied to the biting of a suspected mad-dog, and when it has lain three
hours, be cast to poultrey, they will die if they eat of it. In Italy,
when a countreyman finds any pain in his side, he drinks a pint of the
fresh oyl of this nut, and finds immediate ease: And more famous is the
wonderful cure, which the _fungus_ substance separating the lobs of the
kernel, pulveriz’d and drank in wine, in a moderate quantity, did
recover the English army in Ireland of a dyssentary, when no other
remedy could prevail: The same also in pleurisies, &c. The juice of the
outward rind of the nut, makes an excellent gargle for a sore-throat:
The kernel being rubb’d upon any crack or chink of a leaking or crazy
vessel, stops it better than either clay, pitch, or wax: In France they
eat them blanch’d and fresh, with wine and salt, having first cut them
out of the shells before they are hardned, with a short broad
brass-knife, because iron rusts, and these they call _cernois_, from
their manner of scooping them out. Lastly, of the _fungus_ emerging from
the trunk of an old tree, (and indeed some others) is made touch-wood,
artificially prepar’d in a _lixivium_ or lye, dried, and beaten flat,
and then boil’d with salt-peter, to render it apter to kindle. The tree
wounded in the Spring, yields a liquor, which makes an artificial wine.
See Birch, cap. XVII. Of other species, see Mr. Ray’s _Dendrolog._ Tom.
III. p. 5, 6.

FOOTNOTES:

{101:1} See Servius introduc’d discoursing of this and other nuts,
_Macrob. Saturn._ l. 3. c. 18.

{104:1}

    Illa domi natas, nostraque ex arbore mensas
    Tempora viderunt: hos lignum stabat in usus,
    Annosam si fortè nucem dejecerat Eurus.

    _Juv._ l. 4. Sat. 11.

{107:1} _Philosoph. Transact._ vol. III, num. xl, p. 802.

CHAPTER X.

_Of the Service, and black cherry-tree._

1. _Sorbus_, the service-tree (of which there are four sorts) is rais’d
of the chequers, or berries, which being ripe (that is) rotten, about
September (and the pulp rub’d off clean from the stones, in dry sand,
and so kept till after Christmas) may be sown like beech-mast, educated
in the nursery like the chesnut: It is reported that the sower never
sees the fruit of his labour; either for that it bears only being very
old, or that men are commonly so, before they think of planting trees:
But this is an egregious mistake; for these come very soon to be trees,
and being planted young, thrive exceedingly; I have likewise planted
them as big as my arm successfully: The best way is therefore to
propagate them of suckers, of which they put forth enough, as also of
sets, and may be budded with great improvement: They delight in
reasonable good stiff ground, rather inclining to cold, than over-hot;
for in places which are too dry, they never bear kindly. The
_torminalis_ (so called for its effects against gripings of the bowels)
is the kind most frequent with us; for those of the narrower, and less
indented leaf, are not so common in England as in France, bearing a sort
of berry of the pear-shape, and is there call’d the _cormier_; this tree
may be graffed either on it self, or on the white-thorn, and quince. To
this we might add, the _mespilus_ or medlar, being an hard wood, and of
which I have seen very beautiful walking-staves. But there is yet a rare
kind of service-tree, frequent in Germany, which we find not in our
woods, and they speak of another sort, which bears poyson-berries.

2. The timber of the sort is useful for the joyner, and of which I have
seen a room curiously wainscotted: Also for the engraver of wood-cuts,
bows, pullys, skrews, mill-spindles and other; goads to drive oxen with,
&c. pistol and gun-stocks, and for most that the wild-pear-tree, serves;
and being of a very delicate grain for the turner, and divers
curiosities, and looks beautifully, and is almost everlasting, being
rubb’d over with oyl of linseed, well boil’d, it may be made to
counterfeit ebony, or almost any Indian wood, colour’d according to art:
Also it is taken to build with, yielding beams of considerable
substance: The shade is beautiful for walks, and the fruit not
unpleasant, especially the second kind, of which with new wine and
honey, they make a _conditum_ of admirable effect to corroborate the
stomach; and the fruit alone is good in dysentery’s and lasks. The water
distill’d from the stalks of the flowers and leaves in M. B. and twice
rectified upon fresh matter, is incomparable for consumptive and tabid
bodies, taking an ounce daily at several times: Likewise it cures the
green-sickness in virgins, and is prevalent in all fluxes; distill’d
warm into the ears it abates the pain: The wood or bark contus’d, and
applied to any green wound, heals it; and the powder thereof drank in
oyl olive, consolidates inward ruptures: Lastly, the salt of the wood
taken in decoction of _althæa_ to three grains, is an incomparable
remedy to break, and expel gravel. The service gives the husbandman an
early presage of the approaching Spring, by extending his adorned buds
for a peculiar entertainment, and dares peep out in the severest
Winters.

3. That I rank this amongst the forest berry-bearing trees, (frequent in
the hedges, and growing wild in Herefordshire, and many places; for I
speak not here of our orchard-cherries, said to have been brought into
Kent out of Flanders by Hen. VIII.) is chiefly from the suffrage of that
industrious planter Mr. Cooke, from whose ingenuity and experience (as
well as out of gratitude for his frequent mentioning of me in his
elaborate and useful work) I acknowledge to have benefited my self, and
this edition; though I have also given no obscure tast of this pretty
tree in Chap. XX.

It is rais’d of the stones of black-cherries very ripe (as they are in
July) endeavouring to procure such as are full, and large; whereof some
he tells us, are little inferior to the black Orleance, without
graffing, and from the very genius of the ground. These gather’d, the
fleshy part is to be taken off, by rolling them under a plank in dry
sand, and when the humidity is off (as it will be in 3 or 4 days)
reserve them in sand again a little moist and hous’d, ’till the
beginning of February, when you may sow them in a light gravelly mould,
keeping them clean for two years, and thence planting them into your
nurseries, to raise other kinds upon, or for woods, copses and
hedge-rows, and for walks and avenues, which if of a dryish soil, mixt
with loam, though the bottom be gravel, will thrive into stately trees,
beautified with blossoms of a surprizing whiteness, greatly relieving
the sedulous bees, and attracting birds.

If you sow them in beds immediately after they are excarnated, they
will appear the following Spring, and then at two years shoot, be fit to
plant out where you please; otherwise, being kept too long e’er you sow
them, they will sleep two Winters: And this is a rule, which he
prescribes for all sorts of stone-fruit.

You may almost at any time remove young cherry-trees, abating the heads
to a single shoot.

He recommends it for the copse, as producing a strong shoot, and as apt
to put forth from the roots, as the elm; especially, if you fell lusty
trees: In light ground it will increase to a goodly tall tree, of which
he mentions one, that held above 85 foot in height: I have my self
planted of them, and imparted to my friends, which have thriv’d
exceedingly; but till now did not insert it among the foresters: The
vertues of the fruit of this cherry-tree against the epilepsy, palsy,
and convulsions, &c. are in the spirits and distill’d waters. Concerning
its other uses, see the chapter and section above-mentioned, to which
add _pomona_, Chap. 8. annexed with this treatise. This tree affords
excellent stocks for the budding and graffing of other cherries on.

And here I might mention the bitter cherry of Canada, (tho’ exceedingly
unlike to ours) which would yet be propagated for the incomparable
liquor it is said to yield, preferable to the best limonade, by an
incision of two inches deep in the stem, and sloping to the length of a
foot, without prejudice to the tree. What is said of it, and of the
maple, in the late discovery of the North-America, may be seen in the
late description of those countries. For other exotic species, v. Ray
_Dendrolog._ Tom. III. p. 45, 46.

CHAPTER XI.

_Of the Maple._

1. The maple [_acer minus_] (of which authors (see Salmasius upon
_Solinus_, c. 33.) reckon very many kinds) was of old held in equal
estimation almost with the citron; especially the _bruscum_, the
French-maple and the _pavonaceus_, peacocks-tail maple, which is that
sort so elegantly undulated, and crisped into variety of curles, as
emulates the famous _citria_. It were a most laudable attempt, if some
would enquire out, and try the planting of such sorts as are not
indigenes amongst us; such as is especially the German _Aier_, and that
of Virginia, not yet cultivated here, but an excellent tree: And if this
were extended to other timber, and exotic trees likewise, it would prove
of extraordinary benefit and ornament to the publick, and were worthy
even of the royal care. They are all produced of seeds contain’d in the
folliacles and keys, or birds-tongues (as they are call’d) like the ash,
(after a year’s interrment) and like to it, affect a sound, and a dry
mould; growing both in woods and hedge-rows, especially in the latter;
which if rather hilly than low, affords the fairest timber. It is also
propagated by layers and suckers. By shredding up the boughs to a head,
I have caused it to shoot to a wonderful height in a little time; but if
you will lop it for the fire, let it be done in January; and indeed it
is observ’d to be of noxious influence to the subnascent plants of other
kinds, by reason of a clammy dew which it sheds upon them, and therefore
they would not be indulg’d in pollards, or spreading trees, but to
thicken under-woods and copses. The timber is far superior to beech for
all uses of the turner, who seeks it for dishes, cups, trays, trenchers,
&c. as the joyner for tables, inlayings, and for the delicateness of the
grain, when the knurs and nodosities are rarely diapred, which does much
advance its price: Our turners will work it so thin, that it is almost
transparent: Also for the lightness (under the name _Aier_) imploy’d
often by those who make musical instruments: Also that especially, which
grows in Friuli, Carniola, and Saltzburglandt: There is a larger sort,
which we call the sycomor.

2. But the description of this lesser maple, and the ancient value of
it, is worth the citing. _Acer operum elegantiâ, & subtilitate cedro
secundum; plura ejus genera: Album, quod praecipui candoris vocatur
Gallicum: In Transpadana Italia, transque Alpes nascens. Alterum genus,
crispo macularum discursu, qui cum excellentior fuit, à similitudine
caudæ pavonum nomen accepit._

     ‘The maple, (says Pliny) for the elegancy and fineness of the wood,
     is next to the very cedar it self. There are several kinds of it,
     especially the white, which is wonderfully beautiful; this is
     call’d the French-maple, and grows in that part of Italy, that is
     on the other side of Po beyond the Alpes: The other has a curl’d
     grain, so curiously maculated, that from a near resemblance, it was
     usually call’d the Peacock’s-tail, &c.’

He goes on to commend that of Istria, and that growing on the mountains
for the best: But in the next chapter; _Pulcherrimum vero est bruscum,
multoque excellentius etiamnum mollusculum, tuber utrumque arboris ejus.
Bruscum intortiùs crispum, molluscum simplicius sparsum; et si
magnitudinem mensarum caperet, haud dubiè præferretur cedro, nunc intra
pugillares, lectorumque silicios aut laminas, &c. è brusco fiunt mensæ
nigrescentes, &c._ Plin. _l._ 16. c. 15, 16.

     ‘The _bruscum_, or Knur is wonderfully fair, but the _molluscum_ is
     counted most precious; both of them knobs and swellings out of the
     tree. The _bruscum_ is more intricately crisp’d; the _molluscum_
     not so much; and had we trees large enough to saw into planks for
     tables, ’twould be preferr’d before cedar, (or citron, for so some
     copies read it) but now they use it only for small table-books, and
     with its thin boards to wainscot bed-testers with, _&c._ The
     _bruscum_ is of a blackish kind, with which they make tables.’

Thus far Pliny. And such spotted tables were the famous Tigrin, and
Pantherine curiosities of; not so call’d from being supported with
figures carved like those beasts, as some conceive, and was in use even
in our grand-fathers days, but from its natural spots and maculations,
_hem, quantis facultatibus æstimavere ligneas maculas!_ as Tertullian
crys out, _de Pallio_, c, 5. Such a table was that of Cicero’s, which
cost him 10000 _Sesterces_; such another had Asinius Gallus. That of
King Juba was sold for 15000, and another which I read of, valu’d at
140000 H.S. which at about 3d. sterling, arrives to a pretty sum; and
yet that of the Mauritanian Ptoleme, was far richer, containing four
foot and an half diameter, three inches thick, which is reported to have
been sold for its weight in gold: Of that value they were, and so madly
luxurious the age, that when they at any time reproach’d their wives for
their wanton expensiveness in pearl and other rich trifles, they were
wont to retort, and turn the tables upon their husbands. The knot of the
timber was the most esteem’d, and is said to be much resembled by the
female cypress: We have now, I am almost persuaded, as beautiful planks
of some walnut-trees, near the root; and yew, ivy, rose-wood, ash,
thorn, and olive, I have seen incomparable pieces; but the great art was
in the seasoning, and politure; for which last, the rubbing with a man’s
hand who came warm out of the bath, was accounted better than any cloth,
as Pliny reports. Some there be who contend, this citern was a part near
the root of the cedar, which, as they describe it, is very oriental and
odoriferous; but most of the learned favour the citron, and that it grew
not far from our Tangier, about the foot of Mount Atlas, whence haply
some industrious person might procure of it from the Moors; and I did
not forget to put his then Excellency my Lord H. Howard (since his Grace
the Duke of Norfolk) in mind of it; who I hoped might have opportunities
of satisfying our curiosity, that by comparing it with those elegant
woods, which both our own countries, and the Indies furnish, we might
pronounce something in the controversie: But his not going so far into
the countrey, and the disorder which happen’d at his being there, quite
frustrated this expectation: Here I think good to add, what honest
Palissy philosophises after his plain manner, about the reason of those
pretty undulations and chamfers, which we so frequently find in divers
woods, which he takes to be the descent, as well as ascent of moisture:
For what else (says he) becomes of that water which we often encounter
in the cavities, when many branches divaricate, and spread themselves at
the tops of great trees (especially pollards) unless (according to its
natural appetite) it sink into the very body of the stem through the
pores? For example, in the walnut, you shall find, when ’tis old, that
the wood is admirably figur’d, and, as it were, marbl’d, and therefore
much more esteem’d by the joyners, cabinet-makers, and _ouvrages de
marqueterie_, in-layers, &c. than the young, which is paler of colour,
and without any notable grain, as they call it. For the rain distilling
along the branches, when many of them break out into clusters from the
stem, sinks in, and is the cause of these marks; since we find it
exceedingly full of pores: Do but plane off a thin chip, or sliver from
one of these old trees, and interposing it ’twixt your eye and the
light, you shall observe it to be full of innumerable holes (much more
perspicuous and ample, by the application of a good{119:1} microscope.)
But above all, notable for these extravagant damaskings and characters,
is the maple; and ’tis notorious, that this tree is very full of
branches from the root to its very summit, by reason that it produces no
considerable fruit: These arms being frequently cut, the head is more
surcharged with them, which spreading like so many rays from a centre,
form that hollowness at the top of the stem whence they shoot, capable
of containing a good quantity of water every time it rains: This sinking
into the pores, as was before hinted, is compell’d to divert its course
as it passes through the body of the tree, where-ever it encounters the
knot of any of those branches which were cut off from the stem; because
their roots not only deeply penetrate towards the heart, but are
likewise of themselves very hard and impervious; and the frequent
obliquity of this course of the subsiding moisture, by reason of these
obstructions, is, as may be conceived, the cause of those curious
works, which we find remarkable in this, and other woods, whose branches
grow thick from the stem: But for these curious contextures, consult
rather the learned Dr. Grew. We have shewed how by culture, and
stripping up, it arrives to a goodly tree; and surely there were some of
them of large bulk, and noble shades, that Virgil should chuse it for
the Court of his Evander (one of his worthiest princes, in his best of
poems) sitting in his maple-throne; and when he brings Æneas into the
royal cottage, he makes him this memorable complement; greater, says
great Cowley, than ever was yet spoken at the Escurial, the Louvre, or
White-hall.

    This humble roof, this rustique court, said he,
    Receiv’d Alcides crown’d with victory:
    Scorn not (great guest) the steps where he has trod,
    But contemn wealth, and imitate a God.{120:1}

The savages in Canada, when the sap rises in the maple, by an incision
in the tree, extract the liquor; and having evaporated a reasonable
quantity thereof (as suppose 7 or 8 pound), there will remain one pound,
as sweet and perfect sugar, as that which is gotten out of the cane;
part of which sugar has been for many years constantly sent to Rouen in
Normandy, to be refin’d: There is also made of this sugar an excellent
syrup of maiden-hair and other capillary plants, prevalent against the
_scorbut_; though Mr. Ray thinks otherwise, by reason of the saccharine
substance remaining in the decoction: See _Synops. Stirp._ & Tom. III.
_Dendrolog._ de Acere. p. 93, 94.

FOOTNOTES:

{119:1} Not invented in Palissy’s days.

{120:1}

    ........... Hæc (inquit) limina victor
    Alcides............

CHAPTER XII.

_Of the Sycomor._

1. The sycomor, or wild fig-tree, (falsly so called) is, our _album_,
_acer majus_, or broad-leav’d _mas_, one of the maples, and is much more
in reputation for its shade than it deserves; for the honey-dew leaves,
which fall early (like those of the ash) turn to mucilage and noxious
insects, and putrifie with the first moisture of the season; so as they
contaminate and mar our walks; and are therefore by my consent, to be
banish’d from all curious gardens and avenues. ’Tis rais’d of the keys
in the husk (as soon as ripe) they come up the first Spring; also by
roots and layers, in ground moist, not over-wet or stiff, and to be
govern’d as other nursery plants.

2. There is in Germany a better sort of sycomor than ours, (nor are ours
_indiginæ_) wherewith they make saddle-trees, and divers other things of
use; our own is excellent for trenchers, cart, and plow-timber, being
light, tough, and not much inferior to ash it self; and if the trees be
very tall and handsome, are the more tolerable for distant walks
especially where other better trees prosper not so well, or where a
sudden shade is expected: Some commend them to thicken copp’ces,
especially in parks, as least apt to the spoil of deer, and that it is
good fire-wood. This tree being wounded, bleeds a great part of the
year; and the liquor emulating that of the birch, which for hapning to
few of the rest (that is, to bleed Winter and Summer) I therefore
mention: The sap is sweet and wholsome, and in a short time yields
sufficient quantity to brew with; so as with one bushel of malt, is made
as good ale as four bushels with ordinary water, upon Dr. Tongue’s
experience, _Transact._ vol. IV. f. 917.

CHAPTER XIII.

_Of the Lime-Tree._

1. _Tilia_ the lime-tree, or [linden] is of two kinds; the male (which
some allow to be but a finer sort of elm) or maple rather, is harder,
fuller of knots, and of a redder colour; but producing neither flower,
nor seed, (so constantly and so mature with us) as does the female,
whose blossom is also very odoriferous, perfuming the air, the leaf
larger; the wood is likewise thicker, of small pith, and not obnoxious
to the worm; so as it seems Theophrastus _de Pl._ l. 3. c. 10. said
true, that though they were of both sexes, διαφέρουσι δὲ τῇ μορφῇ τῇ
ὅλῃ, &c. _yet they totally differ’d as to their form_. We send
commonly for this tree into Flanders and Holland, (which indeed grow not
so naturally wild with us) to our excessive cost, whiles our own woods
do in some places spontaneously produce them, and though of somewhat a
smaller leaf, yet altogether as good, apt to be civiliz’d, and made more
florid: From thence I have received many of their berries; so as it is a
shameful negligence, that we are no better provided of nurseries, of a
tree so choice, and universally acceptable: For so they may be rais’d
either of the seeds in October, or (with better success) by the suckers
and plants, which are treated after the same method, and in as great
abundance as the elm, like to which it should be cultivated. You may
know whether the seeds be prolific, by searching the husk; if biting, or
cutting it in sunder it be full and white, and not husky, as sometimes
we find the foreigners: Be sure to collect your seed in dry weather,
airing it in an open room, and reserving it in sand, (as has been
taught) till mid-February, when you may sow it in pretty strong, fresh
and loamy mould, kept shaded, and moist as the season requires, and
clear of weeds, and at the period of two years, plant them out, dress’d
and prun’d as discretion shall advise. But not only by the suckers and
layers, at the roots, but even by branches lopp’d from the head, may
this tree be propagated; and peeling off a little of the bark, at a
competent distance from the stem or arms, and covering it with loam
mingled with rich earth, they will shoot their fibers, and may be
seasonably separated: But to facilitate this and the like attempts, it
is advisable to apply a ligature above the place, when the sap is
ascending, or beneath it, when it (as they say vulgarly) descends. From
June to November you may lay them; the scrubs and less erect, do
excellently to thicken copp’ces, and will yield lusty shoots, and useful
fire-wood.

2. The lime-tree affects a rich feeding loamy soil; in such ground their
growth will be most for speed and spreading. They may be planted as big
as ones leg; their heads topp’d at about six or eight foot bole; thus it
will become (of all other) the most proper, and beautiful for walks, as
producing an upright body, smooth and even bark, ample leaf, sweet
blossom, the delight of bees, and a goodly shade at distance of
eighteen, or twenty five foot. They are also very patient of pruning;
but if it taper over much, some of the collateral boughs would be
spar’d, or cut off, to check the sap, which is best to be done about
Midsummer; and to make it grow upright, take off the prepondering
branches with discretion, and so you may correct any other tree, and
redress its obliquity.

The root in transplanting would not be much lopp’d; and this (says Mr.
Cook) is a good lesson for all young planted trees.

3. The Prince Elector did lately remove very great lime-trees out of one
of his forests, to a steep hill, exceedingly expos’d to the heat of the
sun, at Heidelberg; and that in the midst of summer: They grow behind
that strong tower on the south-west, and most torrid part of the
eminence; being of a dry, reddish barren earth; yet do they prosper
rarely well: But the heads were cut off, and the pits into which they
were transplanted, were (by the industry and direction of _Monsieur_ de
Son, a Frenchman, and admirable mechanician, who himself related it to
me) fill’d with a composition of earth and cow-dung, which was
exceedingly beaten, and so diluted with water, as it became almost a
liquid pap: It was in this, that he plunged the roots, covering the
surface with the turf: A singular example of removing so great trees at
such a season, and therefore by me taken notice of here expresly. Other
perfections of the tree (besides its unparallel’d beauty for walks) are
that it will grow in almost all grounds: That it lasts long; that it
soon heals its scars; that it affects uprightness; that it stoutly
resists a storm; that it seldom becomes hollow.

4. The timber of a well-grown lime is convenient for any use that the
willow is; but much to be preferr’d, as being both stronger, and yet
lighter; whence Virgil calls them _tilias leves_; and therefore fit for
yokes, and to be turn’d into boxes for the apothecaries; and Columella
commends _arculas tiliaceas_. And because of its colour, and easy
working, and that it is not subject to split, architects make with it
models for their designed buildings; and the carvers in wood, not only
for small figures, but large statues and intire histories, in bass, and
high relieve; witness (besides several more) the lapidation of St.
Stephen, with the structures and elevations about it: The trophies,
festoons, frutages, encarpa, and other sculptures in the frontoons,
freezes, capitals, pedestals, and other ornaments and decorations, (of
admirable invention and performance) to be seen about the choir of St.
Paul’s and other churches; royal palaces, and noble houses in city and
countrey. All of them, the works and invention of our Lysippus, Mr.
Gibbons; comparable, and for ought appears, equal to any thing of the
antients; having had the honour (for so I account it) to be the first
who recommended this great artist to his Majesty, Charles the II. I
mention it on this occasion, with much satisfaction. With the twigs,
they made baskets and cradles, and of the smoother side of the bark,
tablets for writing; for the antient _Philyra_ is but our _Tilia_; of
which Munting affirms, he saw a book made of the inward bark, written
about 1000 years since. Such another was brought to the Count of St.
Amant, Governor of Arras, 1662, for which there was given 8000 ducats by
the Emperor, and that it contain’d a work of Cicero, _De Ordinanda
Republica, & De Inveniendis Orationum Exordiis_: A piece inestimable,
never publish’d; is now in the library at Vienna, after it had formerly
been the greatest rarity in that of the late Cardinal Mazarine: Other
papyraceous trees are mention’d by West-Indian travellers, especially in
Hispaniola, Java, &c. which not only exceed our largest paper for
breadth and length, and may be written on on both sides, but is
comparable to our best vellum. Bellonius says, that the Grecians made
bottles of the _tilia_, which they finely rozin’d within-side, so
likewise for pumps of ships, also lattices for windows: Shooemakers use
dressers of the plank to cut leather on, as not so hard as to turn the
edges of their knives; and even the coursest membrane, or slivers of the
tree growing ’twixt the bark and the main body, they now twist into
bass-ropes; besides, the truncheons make a far better coal for
gun-powder than that of alder it self; Scriblets for painters first
draughts are also made of its coals; and the extraordinary candor and
lightness, has dignify’d it above all the woods of our forest, in the
hands of the Right Honourable the White-Stave officers of His Majesty’s
Imperial Court. Those royal plantations of these trees in the parks of
Hampton-court, and St. James’s, will sufficiently instruct any man how
these (and indeed all other trees which stand single) are to be
govern’d, and defended from the injuries of beasts, and sometimes more
unreasonable creatures, till they are able to protect themselves. In
Holland (where the very high-ways are adorn’d with them) they frequently
clap three or four deal-boards (in manner of a close trunk) about them;
but it is not so well; because it keeps out the air, which should have
free access and intercourse to the bole, and by no means be excluded
from flowing freely about them, or indeed any other trees; provided
they are secur’d from cattel, and the violence of impetuous winds, &c.
as His Majesty’s are, without those close coffins, in which the
Dutch-men seem rather to bury them alive: In the mean time, is there a
more ravishing or delightful object, than to behold some intire streets,
and whole towns planted with these trees, in even lines before their
doors, so as they seem like cities in a wood? this is extreamly fresh,
of admirable effect against the epilepsie, for which the delicately
scented blossoms are held prevalent, and skreen the houses both from
winds, sun, and dust; than which there can be nothing more desirable
where streets are much frequented. For thus

    The stately Lime, smooth, gentle, streight and fair,
    (With which no other Dryad may compare)
    With verdant locks, and fragrant blossoms deckt,
    Does a large, ev’n, odorate shade project.{127:1}

_Diræ_ and curses therefore on those inhuman and ambitious tyrants, who,
not contented with their own dominions, invade their peaceful neighbour,
and send their legions, without distinction, to destroy and level to the
ground such venerable and goodly plantations, and noble avenues,
irreparable marks of their barbarity.

The distance for walks (as we said) may in rich ground, be twenty five
foot, in more ordinary soil, eighteen or twenty. For a most prodigious
tree of this kind, see Chap. 39. sect. 10.

The berries reduc’d to powder, cure the dysentery and stop blood at the
nose: The distill’d-water is good against the epilepsy, apoplexy,
vertigo, trembling of the heart, gravel; Schroder commends a mucilage of
the bark for wounds, _repellens urinam, & menses ciens_, &c. And I am
told, the juice of the leaves fixes colours.

FOOTNOTES:

{127:1}

    Stat philyra; haud omnes formosior altera surgit
    Inter hamadryades; mollissima, candida, lævis,
    Et viridante comâ, & beneolenti flore superba,
    Spargit odoratam latè, atque æqualiter umbram.

    _Couleii_, l. 6, Pl.

CHAPTER XIV.

_Of the Poplar, Aspen, and Abele._

1. _Populus._ I begin this second class (according to our former
distribution) with the poplar, of which there are several kinds; white,
black, &c. (which in Candy ’tis reported bears seed) besides the aspen.
The white (famous heretofore for yielding its _umbram hospitalem_) is
the most ordinary with us, to be rais’d in abundance by every set or
slip. Fence the ground as far as any old poplar-roots extend, they will
furnish you with suckers innumerable, to be slipp’d from their mothers,
and transplanted the very first year: But if you cut down an old tree,
you shall need no other nursery. When they are young, their leaves are
somewhat broader and rounder (as most other trees are) than when they
grow aged. In moist and boggy places they will flourish wonderfully, so
the ground be not spewing; but especially near the margins and banks of
rivers,

    _Populus in fluviis_..........

and in low, sweet, and fertile ground; yea, and in the dryer likewise.
Also trunchions of seven or eight foot long, thrust two foot into the
earth, (a hole being made with a sharp hard stake, fill’d with water,
and then with fine earth pressed in, and close about them) when once
rooted, may be cut at six inches above ground; and thus placed at a yard
distant, they will immediately furnish a kind of copp’ce. But in case
you plant them of rooted trees, or smaller sets, fix them not so deep;
for though we bury the trunchions thus profound, yet is the root which
they strike, commonly but shallow. They will make prodigious shoots in
15, or 16 years; but then the heads must by no means be diminish’d, but
the lower branches may, yet not too far up; the foot would also be
cleansed every second year. This for the white. The black poplar is
frequently pollar’d when as big as one’s arm, eight or nine foot from
the ground, as they trim them in Italy, for their vines to serpent and
twist on, and those they poll, or head every second year, sparing the
middle, streight, and thrivingest shoot, and at the third year cut him
also. There be yet that condemn the pruning of this poplar, as hindring
their growth.

2. The shade of this tree is esteemed very wholsome in Summer, but they
do not become walks, or avenues by reason of their suckers, and that
they foul the ground at fall of the leaf; but they would be planted in
barren woods, and to flank places at distance, for their increase, and
the glittering brightness of their foliage: The leaves are good for
cattel, which must be stripp’d from the cut boughs before they are
faggoted. This to be done in the decrease of October, and reserv’d in
bundles for winter-fodder. The wood of white poplar is sought of the
sculptor, and they saw both sorts into boards, which, where they lie
dry, continue a long time. Of this material they also made shields of
defence in sword and buckler-days. Dioscorides writes, that the bark
chopt small, and sow’d in rills, well and richly manur’d and watered,
will produce a plentiful crop of mushrooms; or warm water, in which yest
is dissolv’d, cast upon a new-cut stump: It is to be noted, that those
_fungi_, which spring from the putrid stumps of this tree are not
venenous (as of all, or most other trees they are) being gathered after
the first autumnal rains. There is a poplar of a paler green, and is the
properest for watry ground: ’Twill grow of trunchions from two, or eight
foot long, and bringing a good lop in a short time, is by some preferr’d
to willows.

For the setting of these, Mr. Cook advises the boring of the ground with
a sort of auger, to prevent the stripping of the bark from the stake in
planting: A foot and half deep, or more if great, (for some may be 8 or
9 foot) for pollards, cut sloping, and free of cracks at either end: Two
or three inches diameter, is a competent bigness, and the earth should
be ramm’d close to them.

Another expedient is, by making drains in very moist ground, two spade
deep, and three foot wide, casting up the earth between the drains,
sowing it the first year with oats to mellow the ground, the next Winter
setting it for copp’ce, with these, any, or all the watry sorts of
trees; thus, in four or five years, you will have a handsome fell, and
so successively: It is in the former author, where the charge is exactly
calculated, to whom I refer the reader. I am inform’d, that in Cheshire
there grow many stately and streight black poplars, which they call
_peplurus_, that yield boards and planks of an inch and half thickness;
so fit for floaring of rooms, by some preferr’d to oak, for the
whiteness and lasting, where they lie dry.

3. They have a poplar in Virginia of a very peculiar shap’d leaf, as if
the point of it were cut off, which grows very well with the curious
amongst us to a considerable stature. I conceive it was first brought
over by John Tradescant, under the name of the tulip-tree, (from the
likeness of its flower) but is not, that I find, taken much notice of in
any of our herbals: I wish we had more of them; but they are difficult
to elevate at first.

4. The aspen only (which is that kind of _libyca_ or white poplar,
bearing a smaller, and more tremulous leaf, (by the French call’d _la
tremble_ or quaker) thrusts down a more searching foot, and in this
likewise differs, that he takes it ill to have his head cut off: Pliny
would have short trunchions couched two foot in the ground (but first
two days dried) at one foot and half distance, and then moulded over.

5. There is something a finer sort of white poplar, which the Dutch call
_abele_, and we have of late _abele_ much transported out of Holland:
These are also best propagated of slips from the roots, the least of
which will take, and may in March, at three or four years growth, be
transplanted.

6. In Flanders (not in France, as a late author pretends) they have
large nurseries of them, which first they plant at one foot distance,
the mould light and moist, by no means clayie, in which though they may
shoot up tall, yet for want of root, they never spread; for, as I said,
they must be interr’d pretty deep, not above three inches above ground;
and kept clean, by pruning them to the middle-shoot for the first two
years, and so till the third or fourth. When you transplant, place them
at eight, ten, or twelve foot interval: They will likewise grow of
layers, and even of cuttings in very moist places. In three years, they
will come to an incredible altitude; in twelve, be as big as your
middle; and in eighteen or twenty, arrive to full perfection. A specimen
of this advance we have had of an _abele_-tree at Sion, which being
lopp’d in Febr. 1651, did by the end of October 52, produce branches as
big as a man’s wrist, and 17 foot in length; for which celerity we may
recommend them to such late builders, as seat their houses in naked and
unshelter’d places, and that would put a guise of antiquity upon any new
inclosure; since by these, whilst a man is in a voyage of no long
continuance, his house and lands may be so covered, as to be hardly
known at his return. But as they thus increase in bulk, their value (as
the Italian poplar, has taught us) advances likewise; which after the
first seven years, is annually worth twelve pence more: So as the Dutch
look upon a plantation of these trees, as an ample portion for a
daughter, and none of the least effects of their good husbandry; which
truly may very well be allow’d, if that calculation hold, which the late
worthy{132:1} Knight has asserted, (who began his plantation not long
since about Richmond,) that 30 pound being laid out in these plants,
would render at the least ten thousand pounds in eighteen years; every
tree affording thirty plants, and every of them thirty more, after each
seven year’s improving twelve pence in growth, till they arrive to their
acme.

7. The black poplar grows rarely with us; it is a stronger and taller
tree than the white, the leaves more dark, and not so ample. Divers
stately ones of these, I remember about the banks of Po in Italy; which
flourishing near the old Eridanus (so celebrated by the poets) in which
the temerarious Phaeton is said to have been precipitated, doubtless
gave argument to that fiction of his sad sister’s metamorphosis, and the
amber of their precious tears. It was whiles I was passing down that
river towards Ferrara, that I diverted my self with this story of the
ingenious poet. I am told there is a mountain-poplar much propagated in
Germany about Vienna, and in Bohemia, of which some trees have yielded
planks of a yard in breadth; why do we procure none of them?

8. The best use of the poplar, and _abele_ (which are all of them
hospitable trees, for any thing thrives under their shades) is for walks
and avenues about grounds which are situated low, and near the water,
till coming to be very old, they are apt to grow knurry, and out of
proportion. The timber is incomparable for all sorts of white wooden
vessels, as trays, bowls and other turners ware; and of especial use for
the bellows-maker, because it is almost of the nature of cork, and for
ship-pumps, though not very solid, yet very close, and yet light; so as
it may be us’d for the soles, as well as wooden-heels of shooes, &c.
Vitruvius _l. de Materia Cædenda_, reckons it among the
building-timbers, _quæ maxime in ædificiis sunt idoneæ_. Likewise to
make carts, because it is exceeding light; for vine, and hop-props, and
divers vimineous works. The loppings in January are for the fire; and
therefore such as have proper grounds, may with ease, and in short time,
store themselves for a considerable family, where fuel is dear: but the
truth is, it burns untowardly, and rather moulders away, than maintains
any solid heat. Of the twigs (with the leaves on) are made brooms. The
_brya_, or catkins attract the bees, as do also the leaves (especially
of the black) more tenacious of the meldews than most forest-trees, the
oak excepted.

Of the aspen, our wood-men make hoops, fire-wood, and coals, &c. and of
the bark of young trees, in some countries, it serves for candle or
torch-wood.

The juice of poplar leaves, dropp’d into the ears, asswages the pain;
and the buds contus’d, and mix’d with honey, is a good _collyrium_ for
the eyes; as the unguent to refrigerate and cause sleep.

One thing more is not to be pass’d over, of the white-poplar; that the
seeds of misselto being put into holes bored in the bark of this tree,
have produced the plant: Experiment sufficient to determine that so long
controverted question, concerning spontaneous and æquivocal generations.
vid. D. _Raii_ P. L. Append. p. 1918.

FOOTNOTES:

{132:1} Sir Richard Weston.

CHAPTER XV.

_Of the Quick-Beam._

1. The quick-beam [_ornus_, or as the _pinax_ more peculiarly, _fraxinus
bubula_; others, the wild sorb] or (as some term it) the witchen, is a
species of wild-ash. The Berries which it produced in October, may then
be sown; or rather the sets planted: I have store of them in a warm
grove of mine, and ’tis of singular beauty: It rises to a reasonable
stature, shoots upright, and slender, and consists of a fine smooth
bark. It delights to be both in mountains and woods, and to fix it self
in good light grounds; Virgil affirms, ’twill unite with the pear.

2. Besides the use of it for the husbandman’s tools, goads, &c. the
wheelright commends it for being all heart; if the tree be large, and so
well grown as some there are, it will saw into planks, boards and
timber, (vide Chap XXX. Sect. 10.) and our fletchers commend it for bows
next to yew; which we ought not to pass over, for the glory of our once
right English ancestors: In a Statute of HEN. 8. you have it mention’d:
It is excellent fuel; but I have not yet observed any other use, save
that the blossoms are of an agreeable scent, and the berries such a
tempting bait for the thrushes, that as long as they last, you shall be
sure of their company. Some highly commend the juice of the berries,
which (fermenting of it self) if well preserv’d, makes an excellent
drink against the spleen and scurvy: Ale and beer brew’d with these
berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink, familiar in Wales, where
this tree is reputed so sacred, that as there is not a church-yard
without one of them planted in them (as among us the yew) so on a
certain day in the year, every body religiously wears a cross made of
the wood, and the tree is by some authors call’d _fraxinus
Cambro-Britannica_; reputed to be a preservative against fascinations
and evil-spirits; whence, perhaps, we call it witchen; the boughs being
stuck about the house, or the wood used for walking-staves.

CHAPTER XVI.

_Of the Hasel._

1. _Nux silvestris_, or _corylus_, the hasel, is best rais’d from
the{136:1} nuts, (also by suckers and layers) which you shall sow like
mast, in a pretty deep furrow toward the end of February, or treat them
as you are instructed in the walnut; light ground may immediately be
sown and harrow’d-in very accurately; but in case the mould be clay,
plow it earlier, and let it be sufficiently mellow’d with the frosts;
and then the third year cut your trees near to the ground with a sharp
bill, the moon decreasing.

2. But if you would make a grove for pleasure, plant them in fosses, at
a yard distance, and cut them within half a foot of the earth, dressing
them for three or four Springs and Autumns, by only loosning the mould a
little about their roots. Others there are, who set the nuts by hand at
one foot distance, to be transplanted the third year, at a yard asunder:
But this work is not to be taken in hand so soon as the nuts fall, till
winter be well advanc’d; because they are exceedingly obnoxious to the
frosts; nor will they sprout till the Spring; besides, vermin are great
devourers of them: Preserve them therefore moist, not mouldy; by laying
them in their own dry leaves, or in sand, till January.

    Hasels from sets and suckers take.{136:2}

3. From whence they thrive very well, the shoots being of the
scantlings of small wands and switches, or somewhat bigger, and such as
have drawn divers hairy twigs, which are by no means to be disbranch’d,
no more than their roots, unless by a very sparing and discreet hand.
Thus, your _coryletum_, or copp’ce of hasels, being planted about
Autumn, may (as some practise it) be cut within three or four inches of
the ground the Spring following, which the new cyon will suddenly repair
in clusters, and tufts of fair poles of twenty, or sometimes thirty foot
long: But I rather should spare them till two or three years after, when
they shall have taken strong hold, and may be cut close to the very
earth, the improsperous and feeble ones especially. Thus are likewise
filberts to be treated, both of them improved much by transplanting, but
chiefly by graffing, and it would be try’d with filberts, and even with
almonds themselves, for more elegant experiments.

In the mean time, I do not confound the filbert, pontic, or filbord,
distinguish’d by its beard, among our foresters (or bald hasel-nuts)
which doubtless we had from abroad; and bearing the names of _avelan_,
_avelin_, as I find in some ancient records and deeds in my custody,
where my ancestors names were written Avelan, _alias_, Evelin,
generally.

4. For the place, they above all affect cold, barren, dry, and sandy
grounds; also mountains, and even rocky soils produce them; and where
quaries of free-stone lie underneath, as that at Hasulbery in Wilts,
Haseling-field in Cambridge-shire, Haselmeer in Surrey, and other
places; but more plentifully, if the ground be somewhat moist, dankish
and mossie, as in the fresher bottoms, and sides of hills, hoults, and
in hedge-rows. Such as are maintain’d for copp’ces, may after twelve
years be fell’d the first time; the next, at seven or eight, &c. for by
this period, their roots will be compleatly vigorous. You may plant them
from October to January, provided you keep them carefully weeded, till
they have taken fast hold; and there is not among all our store, a more
profitable wood for copp’ces, and therefore good husbands should store
them with it.

5. The use of the hasel is for poles, spars, hoops, forks, angling-rods,
faggots, cudgels, coals, and springs to catch birds; and it makes one of
the best coals, once us’d for gun-powder; being very fine and light,
till they found alder to be more fit: There is no wood which purifies
wine sooner, than the chips of hasel: Also for with’s and bands, upon
which, I remember, Pliny thinks it a pretty speculation, that a wood
should be stronger to bind withal, being bruis’d and divided, than when
whole and entire: The coals are us’d by painters, to draw with like
those of Sallow: Lastly, for riding switches, and divinatory rods for
the detecting and finding out of minerals; (at least, if that tradition
be no imposture) is very wonderful; by whatsoever occult virtue, the
forked-stick (so cut, and skilfully held) becomes impregnated with those
invisible steams and exhalations; as by its spontaneous bending from an
horizontal posture, to discover not only mines, and subterraneous
treasure, and springs of water, but criminals, guilty of murther, &c.
made out so solemnly, and the effects thereof, by the attestation of
magistrates, and divers other learned and credibile persons, (who have
critically examined matters of fact) is certainly next to miracle, and
requires a strong faith: Let the curious therefore consult that
philosophical treatise of{139:1} Dr. Vallemont; which will at least
entertain them with a world of surprizing things. But now after all the
most signal honour it was ever employ’d in, and which might deservedly
exalt this humble and common plant above all the trees of the wood, is
that of hurdles, (especially the flexible white: the red and brittle);
not for that it is generally used for the folding of our innocent sheep,
an emblem of the church; but for making the walls of one of the first
Christian Oratories in the world; and particularly in this island, that
venerable and sacred fabrick at Glastenbury, founded by St. Joseph of
Arimathea; which is storied to have been first compos’d but of a few
small hasel-rods interwoven about certain stakes driven into the ground;
and walls of this kind, instead of laths and punchions, superinduc’d
with a course mortar made of loam and straw, do to this day inclose
divers humble cottages, sheads and out-houses in the countrey; and ’tis
strong and lasting for such purposes, whole, or cleft, and I have seen
ample enclosures of courts and gardens so secur’d.

6. There is a compendious expedient for the thickning of copp’ces which
are too transparent, by laying of a sampler or pole of an hasel, ash,
poplar, &c. of twenty or thirty foot in length (the head a little
lopp’d) into the ground, giving it a chop near the foot, to make it
succumb; this fastned to the earth with a hook or two, and cover’d with
some fresh mould at a competent depth (as gardeners lay their
carnations) will produce a world of suckers, thicken and furnish a
copp’ce speedily. I add no more of filberts, a kinder and better sort
of hasel-nut, of larger and longer shape and beard; the kernels also
cover’d with a fine membrane, of which the red is more delicate: They
both are propagated as the hasel, and while more domestick, planted
either asunder, or in palisade, are seldom found in the copp’ces: They
are brought among other fruit, to the best tables for desert, and are
said to fatten, but too much eaten, obnoxious to the asthmatic. In the
mean time, of this I have had experience; that hasel-nuts, but the
filberd specially, being full ripe, and peel’d in warm water, (as they
blanch almonds) make a pudding very little (if at all) inferior to that
our ladies make of almonds. But I am now come to the water-side; let us
next consider the aquatic.

FOOTNOTES:

{136:1} _De nucum generibus_, vide Macrob. Sect. L. II. C. 14.

{136:2}

    Plantis & duræ coryli nascuntur....................

    _Georg. 2._

{139:1} Vallemont, _Physique occult ou traite de la baguet divinitoire,
&c._ But concerning the exploration, and superstitious original, see Sir
Thomas Brown, _Vulg. Err._ cap. xxiv. sect. 17. and the commentators
upon 4. Hosea. 12.

CHAPTER XVII.

_Of the Birch._

1. The birch [_betula_, in British _bedw_, doubtless a proper indigene
of England, (whence some derive the name of Barkshire) though Pliny
calls it a Gaulish tree] is altogether produc’d of roots or suckers,
(though it sheds a kind of _samera_ about the Spring) which being
planted at four or five foot interval, in small twigs, will suddenly
rise to trees; provided they affect the ground, which cannot well be too
barren, or spongy; for it will thrive both in the dry, and the wet,
sand, and stony, marshes, and bogs; the water-galls, and uliginous parts
of forests that hardly bear any grass, do many times spontaneously
produce it in abundance, whether the place be high, or low, and nothing
comes amiss to it. Plant the small twigs, or suckers having roots, and
after the first year, cut them within an inch of the surface; this will
cause them to sprout in strong and lusty tufts, fit for copp’ce, and
spring-woods; or, by reducing them to one stem, render them in a very
few years fit for the turner. For

2. Though birch be of all other the worst of timber, yet has it its
various uses, as for the husbandman’s ox-yoaks; also for hoops, small
screws, paniers, brooms, wands, bavin-bands, and wythes for fagots; and
claims a memory for arrows, bolts, shafts, (our old English artillery;)
also for dishes, bowls, ladles, and other domestic utensils, in the good
old days of more simplicity, yet of better and truer hospitality. In
New-England our Northern Americans make canoos, boxes, buckets, kettles,
dishes, which they sow, and joyn very curiously with thread made of
cedar-roots, and divers other domestical utensils, as baskets, baggs,
with this tree, whereof they have a blacker kind; and out of a certain
excrescence from the bole, a _fungus_, which being boil’d, beaten, and
dry’d in an oven, makes excellent spunck or touch-wood, and balls to
play withal; and being reduc’d to powder, astringent, is an infallible
remedy in the hœmerhoids. They make also not only this small ware, but
even small-craft, pinnaces of birch, ribbing them with white cedar, and
covering them with large flakes of birch-bark, sow them with thread of
spruse-roots, and pitch them, as it seems we did even here in Britain,
as well as the Veneti, making use of the willow, whereof Lucan,

    When Sicoris to his own banks restor’d,
    Had quit the field, of twigs, and willow-board
    They build small craft, cover’d with bullocks-hide,
    In which they reach’d the rivers farther side:
    So sail the Veneti if Padus flow,
    The Britains sail on their rough ocean so.{142:1}

Also for fuel: In many of the mosses in the West-Riding of Yorkshire,
are often dug up birch-trees, that burn and flame like firr and
candle-wood; and I think Pliny says the Gaules extracted a sort of
bitumen out of birch: Great and small coal, are made by the charring of
this wood; (see Book III Chap. 4. of fuel) as of the tops and loppings,
Mr. Howard’s new tanne. The inner white cuticle and silken-bark, (which
strips off of it self almost yearly) was anciently us’d for
writing-tables, even before the invention of paper; of which there is a
birch-tree in Canada, whose bark will serve to write on, and may be made
into books, and of the twigs very pretty baskets; with the outward
thicker and courser part of the common birch, are divers houses in
Russia, Poland, and those poor northern tracts cover’d, instead of
slates and tyle: Nay, one who has lately publish’d an account of
Sweden,{142:2} says, that the poor people grind the very bark of
birch-trees, to mingle with their bread-corn. ’Tis affirm’d by Cardan,
that some birch-roots are so very extravagantly vein’d, as to represent
the shapes and images of beasts, birds, trees, and many other pretty
resemblances. Lastly, of the whitest part of the old wood, found
commonly in doating birches, is made the grounds of our effeminate
farin’d gallants sweet powder; and of the quite consum’d and rotten
(such as we find reduc’d to a kind of reddish earth in superannuated
hollow-trees) is gotten the best mould for the raising of divers
seedlings of the rarest plants and flowers; to say nothing here of the
magisterial _fasces_ for which anciently the cudgels were us’d by the
_lictor_, for lighter faults, as now the gentler rods by our tyrannical
pædagogues.

3. I should here add the uses of the water too, had I full permission to
tamper with all the medicinal virtues of trees: But if the sovereign
effects of the juice of this despicable tree supply its other defects
(which make some judge it unworthy to be brought into the catalogue of
woods to be propagated) I may perhaps for once, be permitted to play the
empiric, and to gratifie our laborious wood-man with a draught of his
own liquor; and the rather, because these kind of secrets are not yet
sufficiently cultivated; and ingenious planters would by all means be
encourag’d to make more trials of this nature, as the Indians and other
nations have done on their palmes; and trees of several kinds, to their
great emolument. The mystery is no more than this: About the beginning
of March (when the buds begin to be proud and turgid, and before they
explain into leaves) with a chizel and a mallet, cut a slit almost as
deep as the very pith, under some bough or branch of a well-spreading
birch; cut it oblique, and not long-ways (as a good chirurgion would
make his orifice in a vein) inserting a small stone or chip, to keep the
lips of the wound a little open. Sir Hugh Plat, (giving a general rule
for the gathering of sap, and tapping of trees) would have it done
within one foot of the ground, the first rind taken off, and then the
white bark slit over-thwart, no farther than to the body of the tree:
Moreover, that this wound be made only in that part of the bark which
respects the south-west, or between those quarters; because (says he)
little or no sap riseth from the northern, nor indeed when the east-wind
blows. In this slit, by the help of your knife to open it, he directs
that a leaf of the tree be inserted, first fitted to the dimensions of
the slit, from which the sap will distil in manner of filtration: Take
away the leaf, and the bark will close again, a little earth being
clapped to the slit. Thus the Knight for any tree. But we have already
shew’d how the birch is to be treated: Fasten therefore a bottle, or
some such convenient vessel appendant; this does the effect as well as
perforation or tapping: Out of this aperture will extil a limpid and
clear water, retaining an obscure smack both of the tast and odor of the
tree; and which (as I am credibly inform’d) will in the space of twelve
or fourteen days, preponderate, and out-weigh the whole tree it self,
body and roots; which if it be constant, and so happen likewise in other
trees, is not only stupendous, but an experiment worthy the
consideration of our profoundest philosophers: _An ex sola aqua fiunt
arbores?_ whether water only be the principle of vegetables, and
consequently of trees: I say, I am credibly inform’d; and therefore the
late unhappy{144:1} angry-man might have spar’d his animadversion: For
he that said but twenty gallons run, does he know how many more might
have been gotten out of larger apertures, at the insertion of every
branch, and foot in the principal roots during the whole season? But I
conceive I have good authority for my assertion, out of the author cited
in the margin, whose words are these: _Si mense Martio perforaveris
betulam, &c. exstillabit aqua limpida, clara, & pura, obscurum arboris
saporem & odorem referens, quæ spatio 12 aut 14 dierum, præponderabit
arbori cum ramis & radicibus, &c._ His exceptions about the beginning of
March are very insignificant; since I undertake not punctuality of time;
and his own pretended experience shew’d him, that in hard weather it did
not run till the expiration of the month, or beginning of April; and
another time on the tenth of February; and usually he says, about the
twenty-fourth day, &c. at such uncertainty: What immane difference then
is there between the twenty-fourth of Feb. and commencement of March?
Besides, these anomolous bleedings, (even of the same tree) happen early
or later, according to the temper of the air and weather. In the mean
time, evident it is, that we know of no tree which does more copiously
attract, be it that so much celebrated spirit of the world, (as they
call it) in form of water (as some) or a certain specifique liquor
richly impregnated with this balsamical property: That there is such a
_magnes_ in this simple tree, as does manifestly draw to it self some
occult and wonderful virtue, is notorious; nor is it conceivable,
indeed, the difference between the efficacy of that liquor which distils
from the bole, or parts of the tree nearer to the root (where Sir Hugh
would celebrate the incision) and that which weeps out from the more
sublime branches, more impregnated with this astral vertue, as not so
near the root, which seems to attract rather a cruder, and more common
water, through fewer strainers, and neither so pure, and aerial as in
those refined percolations, the nature of the places where these trees
delight to grow (for the most part lofty, dry, and barren) consider’d.
But I refer these disquisitions to the learned; especially, as mentioned
by that incomparable philosopher, and my most noble friend, the
Honourable Mr. Boyle, in his second part of the _Usefulness of Natural
Philosophy_, Sect. 1. Essay 3_d._ where he speaks of the _manna del
corpo_, or trunk-manna, as well as of that liquor from the bough; also
of the _sura_ which the coco-trees afford; and that Polonian secret of
the liquor of the walnut-tree root; with an encouragement of more
frequent experiments to educe saccharine substances upon these
occasions: But the book being publish’d so long since this _Discourse_
was first printed, I take only here the liberty to refer the reader to
one of the best entertainments in the world.

But now before we expatiate farther concerning saps; it is by some
controverted, whether this exhaustion would not be an extreme detriment
to the growth, substance, and other parts of trees: As to the growth and
bulk, if what I have observ’d of a birch, which has for very many years
been perforated at the usual season, (besides the scars made in the
bark) it still thrives, and is grown to a prodigious substance, the
species consider’d. What it would effect in other trees (the vine
excepted unseasonably launc’d) I know not: But this calls to mind, a
tryal of Esq; Brotherton, (mentioning some excortications and incisions,
by what he observ’d in pruning,) that most (if not all) of the sap
ascends by the lignous part of trees, not the cortical; nor between the
cortical and lignous: And that the increase of a tree’s growth in
thickness, is by the descent of the sap, and not by the ascent; so as if
there were no descent, the tree would increase very little, if at all;
for that there is a perpetual circulation of the sap, during the whole
Summer; and whilst it is in this course, and not a descent at Michaelmas
only, as some hold, but evaporated by the branches, during Summer and
Autumn, and at Spring supplied with rains. He also thinks it probable,
that the bodies of plants, as well as those of animals, are nourish’d
and increas’d by a double _pabulum_ or food; as water and air both
impregnated, mixing and coalescing by a mutual conversion.

That all plants and animals seem to have a two-fold kind of roots, one
spreading into the earth, the other shooting up into the air; which, as
they receive and carry up their proper nutriments to the body of the
plant and root, so they carry off the useless dregs and recrements, &c.
But this curious note seeming fitter to have been plac’d in our chapter
of Pruning, (upon which this learned gentleman has given us his
experience) I beg pardon for this diverticle, and return to my subject.

4. But whilst the second edition was under my hand, there came to me
divers papers upon this subject, experimentally made by a worthy friend
of mine, a learned and most industrious person, which I had here once
resolv’d to have publish’d, according to the generous liberty granted me
for so doing; but understanding he was still in pursuit of that useful,
and curious secret, I chang’d my resolution into an earnest address,
that he would communicate it to the world himself, together with those
other excellent enquiries and observations, which he is adorning for the
benefit of planters, and such as delight themselves in those innocent
rusticities. I will only by way of corollary, hint some particulars for
satisfaction of the curious; and especially that we may in some sort
gratifie those earnest suggestions and queries of the late most
obliging{148:1} publisher of the _Philosophical Transactions_, to whose
indefatigable pains the learned world has been infinitely engag’d. In
compliance therefore to his _Queries_, Monday, Octob. 19. 1668. numb.
40. p. 797, 801, &c. these generals are submitted: That in such trials
as my friend essay’d, he has not yet encountred with any sap but what is
very clear and sweet; especially that of the sycomor, which has a
dulcoration as if mixed with sugar, and that it runs one of the
earliest: That the maple distill’d when quite rescinded from the body,
and even whilst he yet held it in his hand: That the sycomor ran at the
root, which some days before yielded no sap from his branches; the
experiment made at the end of March: But the accurate knowledge of the
nature of sap, and its periodic motions and properties in several trees,
should be observed by some at entire leisure to attend it daily, and
almost continually, and will require more than any one person’s industry
can afford: For it must be enquir’d concerning every tree, its age,
soil, situation, &c. the variety of its ascending sap depending on it;
and then of its sap ascending in the branches and roots; descending in
cut branches; ascending from root, and not from branches; the seasons
and difference of time in which those accidents happen, &c. He likewise
thinks the best expedient to procure store of liquor, is, to cut the
trees almost quite through all the circles, on both sides the pith,
leaving only the outmost circle, and the barks on the north, or
north-east side unpierced; and this hole, the larger it is bored, the
more plentifully ’twill distill; which if it be under, and through a
large arm, near the ground, it is effected with greatest advantage, and
will need neither stone, nor chip to keep it open, nor spigot to direct
it to the recipient. Thus it will, in a short time, afford liquor
sufficient to brew with; and in some of these sweet saps, one bushel of
mault will afford as good ale, as four in ordinary waters, even in March
it self; in others, as good as two bushels; for this, preferring the
sycomor before any other: But to preserve it in best condition for
brewing, till you are stored with a sufficient quantity, it is advis’d,
that what first runs, be insolated and placed in the sun, till the
remainder be prepar’d, to prevent its growing sour: But it may also be
fermented alone, by such as have the secret: To the curious these essays
are recommended: That it be immediately stopp’d up in the bottles in
which it is gathered, the corks well wax’d, and expos’d to the sun, till
(as was said) sufficient quantity be run; then let so much rye-bread
(toasted very dry, but not burnt) be put into it, as will serve to set
it a working; and when it begins to ferment, take it out, and bottle it
immediately. If you add a few cloves, &c. to steep in it, ’twill
certainly keep the year about: ’Tis a wonder how speedily it extracts
the tast and tincture of the spice. Mr. Boyle proposes a sulphurous fume
to the bottles: Spirit of wine may haply not only preserve, but advance
the virtues of saps; and infusions of rasins are obvious, and without
decoction best, which does but spend the more delicate parts. Note,
that the sap of the birch, will make excellent mead.

5. To these observations, that of the weight and virtue of the several
juices, would be both useful and curious: As whether that which proceeds
from the bark, or between that and the wood be of the same nature with
that which is suposed to spring from the pores of the woody circles? and
whether it rise in like quantity, upon comparing the incisures? All
which may be try’d, first attempting through the bark, and saving that
apart, and then perforating into the wood, to the thickness of the bark,
or more; with a like separation of what distills. The period also of its
current would be calculated; as how much proceeds from the bark in one
hour, how much from the wood or body of the tree, and thus every hour,
with still a deeper incision, with a good large augre, till the tree be
quite perforated: Then by making a second hole within the first, fitted
with a lesser pipe, the interior heart-sap may be drawn apart, and
examin’d by weight, quantity, colour, distillation, &c. and if no
difference perceptible be detected the presumption will be greater, that
the difference of heart and sap in timber, is not from the saps plenty
or penury, but the season; and then possibly, the very season of
squaring, as well as felling of timber, may be considerable to the
preservation of it.

6. The notice likewise of the saps rising more plentifully, and
constantly in the sun, than shade; more in the day than night, more in
the roots than branch, more southward, and when that, and the west-wind
blows, than northward, &c. may yield many useful observations: As for
planting, to set thicker, or thinner (_si cœtera sint paria_) namely,
the nature of the tree, soil, &c. and not to shade overmuch the roots
of those stems we desire should mount, &c. That in transplanting trees
we turn the best and largest roots towards the south, and consequently
the most ample and spreading part of the head correspondent to the
roots: For if there be a strong root on that quarter, and but a feeble
attraction in the branches, this may not always counterpoise the weak
roots on the north-side, damnified by the too puissant attraction of
over large branches: This may also suggest a cause why trees flourish
more on the south-side, and have their integument and coats thicker on
those aspects annually, with divers other useful speculations, if in the
mean time, they seem not rather to be _puntillos_ over nice for a plain
forester. Let the curious further consult _Philos. Transactions_, numb.
43, 44, 46, 48, 57, 58, 68, 70, 71. for farther instances and tryals,
upon this subject of sap. And that excellent treatise of Hen. Meibomius.
_De Cervisiis Potibusque; & Ebriaminibus extra Vinum_, annext to
_Turnebus de Vino_, &c. Where he shews how, and by whom, (after the
first use of water and milk) were introduc’d the drinks made from
vegetables, vines, corn, and other fruits and juices tapp’d out of
trees, &c.

7. To shew our reader yet, that these are no novel experiments, we are
to know, that a large tract of the world, almost altogether subsists on
these treen liquors; especially that of the date, which being grown to
about seven or eight foot in height, they wound, as we have taught, for
the sap, which they call toddy, a very famous drink in the East-Indies.
This tree increasing every year about a foot, near the opposite part of
the first incisure, they pierce again, changing the receiver; and so
still by opposite wounds and notches, they yearly draw forth the
liquor, till it arrive to near thirty foot upward, and of these they
have ample groves and plantations which they set at seven or eight foot
distance: But then they use to percolate what they extract, through a
stratum made of the rind of the tree, well contus’d and beaten, before
which preparation, it is not safe to drink it; and ’tis observed that
some trees afford a much more generous wine than others of the same
kind. In the coco and palmeto trees, they chop a bough, as we do the
_bétula_; but in the date, make the incision with a chisel in the body
very neatly, in which they stick a leaf of the tree, as a _lingula_ to
direct it into the appendant vessel, which the subjoin’d figure
represents, and illustrates with its improvement to our former
discourse.

Note, if there be no fitting arms, the hole thus obliquely perforated,
and a faucet or pipe made of a swan’s or goose’s quill inserted, will
lead the sap into the recipient; and this is a very neat way, and as
effectual: I would also have it try’d, whether the very top twigs,
grasped in the hand together, a little cropt with a knife, and put into
the mouth of a bottle, would not instil, if not as much, yet a more
refined liquor, as some pretend.

8. The liquor of the birch is esteemed to have all the virtues of the
spirit of salt, without the danger of its acrimony; most powerful for
the dissolving of the stone in the bladder, bloody water and strangury:
Helmont shews how to make a beer of the water; but the wine is a most
rich cordial, curing (as I am told) consumptions, and such interior
diseases as accompany the stone in the bladder or reins{152:1}: The
juice decocted with honey and wine, Dr. Needham affirms he has often
cur’d the scorbut with. This wine, exquisitely made, is so strong, that
the common sort of stone-bottles cannot preserve the spirits, so subtile
they are and volatile; and yet it is gentle, and very harmless in
operation within the body, and exceedingly sharpens the appetite, being
drunk _ante pastum_: I will present you a receipt, as it was sent me by
a fair lady, and have often, and still use it.

{Illustration: (a. b.) The _Body_ of the _Tree_ (g.) boar’d at that part
of the _Arm_ (f.) join’d to the _Stem_, with an Augre of an _Inch_ or
more _diameter_, according to the bigness of the _Tree_. (c.) A part of
the _Bark_, or if you will, a _Faucet_ of _Quill_ bent down into the
Mouth of the _Bottle_ (e.) to conduct the _Liqour_ into it. (d.) The
_String_ about the _Arm_ (f.) by which the _Bottle_ hangs.}

9. To every gallon of birch-water put a quart of honey, well stirr’d
together; then boil it almost an hour with a few cloves, and a little
limon-peel, keeping it well scumm’d: When it is sufficiently boil’d, and
become cold, add to it three or four spoonfuls of good ale to make it
work (which it will do like new ale) and when the yest begins to settle,
bottle it up as you do other winy liquors. It will in a competent time
become a most brisk and spiritous drink, which (besides the former
virtues) is a very powerful opener, and doing wonders for cure of the
phthysick: This wine may (if you please) be made as successfully with
sugar, instead of honey 1 _lb._ to each gallon of water; or you may
dulcifie it with raisins, and compose a raisin-wine of it. I know not
whether the quantity of the sweet ingredients might not be somewhat
reduc’d, and the operation improv’d: But I give it as receiv’d. The
author of the _Vinetum Brit._ boils it but to a quarter or half an hour,
then setting it a cooling, adds a very little yest to ferment and purge
it; and so barrels it with a small proportion of cinamon and mace
bruis’d, about half an ounce of both to ten gallons, close stopp’d, and
to be bottled a month after. Care must be taken to set the bottles in a
very cool place, to preserve them from flying; and the wine is rather
for present drinking, than of long duration, unless the refrigeratorie
be extraordinarily cold. The very smell of the first springing leaves of
this tree, wonderfully recreates and exhilerates the spirits.

10. But besides these, beech, alder, ash, sycomor, elder, &c. would be
attempted for liquors: Thus crabs, and even our very brambles may
possibly yield us medical and useful wines. The poplar was heretofore
esteem’d more physical than the _betula_. The sap of the oak, juice, or
decoction of the inner bark, cures the fashions, or farcy, a virulent
and dangerous infirmity in horses, and which (like cancers) were reputed
incurable by any other topic, than some actual, or potential cautery:
But, what is more noble, a dear friend of mine assur’d me, that a
countrey neighbour of his (at least fourscore years of age) who had lain
sick of a bloody strangury (which by cruel torments reduc’d him to the
very article of death) was, under God, recover’d to perfect, and almost
miraculous health and strength (so as to be able to fall stoutly to his
labour) by one sole draught of beer, wherein was the decoction of the
internal bark of the oak-tree; and I have seen a composition of an
admirable sudorific, and diuretic for all affections of the liver, out
of the like of the elm, which might yet be drunk daily, as our coffee
is, and with no less delight: But quacking is not my trade; I speak only
here as a plain husband-man, and a simple forester, out of the limits
whereof, I hope I have not unpardonably transgressed: Pan was a
physician, and he (you know) was president of the woods. But I proceed
to the alder.

FOOTNOTES:

{142:1}

    Primum cana salix madefacto vimine, parvam
    Texitur in puppim, cæsoque induta juvenco,
    Vectoris patiens, tumidum super emicat amnem.
    Sic Venetus stagnante Pado, fusoque Britannus
    Navigat oceano.......

{142:2} See _Philos. Transact._ Vol. 9. num. 105. p. 93.

{144:1} Dr. Stubb. See the tractate intitled, _Aditus novus ad occultas
sympathiæ & antipathiæ causas inveniendas, per principia philosophiæ
naturalis, & fermentorum artificiosâ anatomiâ hausta, patefactas_, à
Silvestro Rattray, M.D. Glasquensi, 1658. p. 55.

{148:1} Mr. Oldenburg.

{152:1} _De Lithiasi_, c. 8. n. 24, 25, &c.

CHAPTER XVIII.

_Of the Alder._

1. _Alnus_, the alder, (both _conifera_ and _jülifera_) is of all other
the most faithful lover of watery and boggy places, and those most
despis’d weeping parts, or water-galls of forests; .............
_crassisque paludibus alni_; for in better and dryer ground they attract
the moisture from it, and injure it. They are propagated of trunchions,
and will come of seeds (for so they raise them in Flanders, and make
wonderful profit of the plantations) like the poplar; or of roots,
(which I prefer) the trunchions being set as big as the small of ones
leg, and in length about two foot; whereof one would be plunged in the
mud. This profound fixing of aquatick-trees being to preserve them
steddy, and from the concussions of the winds, and violence of waters,
in their liquid and slippery foundations. They may be placed at four or
five foot distance, and when they have struck root, you may cut them,
which will cause them to spring in clumps, and to shoot out into many
useful poles. But if you plant smaller sets, cut them not till they are
arriv’d to some competent bigness, and that in a proper season: Which
is, for all the aquaticks and soft woods, not till Winter be well
advanc’d, in regard of their pithy substance. Therefore, such as you
shall have occasion to make use of before that period, ought to be well
grown, and fell’d with the earliest, and in the first quarter of the
increasing moon, that so the successive shoot receive no prejudice:
Some, before they fell, disbark their alders, and other trees; of which
see Cap. III. Book III. But there is yet another way of planting alders
after the Jersey manner, and as I receiv’d it from a most ingenious
gentleman of that country, which is, by taking trunchions of two or
three foot long, at the beginning of Winter, and to bind them in
faggots, and place the ends of them in water ’till towards the Spring,
by which season they will have contracted a swelling spire, or knurr
about that part, which being set, does (like the gennet-moil apple-tree)
never fail of growing and striking root. There is a black sort more
affected to woods, and drier grounds; and bears a black berry, not so
frequently found; yet growing somewhere about Hampsted, as the learned
Dr. Tan. Robinson observes.

2. There are a sort of husbands who take excessive pains in stubbing up
their alders, where-ever they meet them in the boggie places of their
grounds, with the same indignation as one would extirpate the most
pernicious of weeds; and when they have finished, know not how to
convert their best lands to more profit than this (seeming despicable)
plant might lead them to, were it rightly understood. Besides, the
shadow of this tree, does feed and nourish the very grass which grows
under it; and being set, and well plashed, is an excellent defence to
the banks of rivers; so as I wonder it is not more practis’d about the
Thames, to fortifie, and prevent the mouldring of the walls, and the
violent weather they are exposed to.

3. You may cut aquatic-trees every third or fourth year, and some more
frequently, as I shall shew you hereafter. They should also be abated
within half a foot of the principal head, to prevent the perishing of
the main stock; and besides, to accelerate their sprouting. In setting
the trunchions, it were not amiss to prepare them a little after they
are fitted to the size, by laying them a while in water; this is also
practicable in willows, &c.

4. Of old they made boats of the greater parts of this tree, and
excepting Noah’s ark, the first vessels we read of, were made of this
material.

    When hollow alders first the waters try’d,{157:1}

    And down the rapid Poe light alders glide.{157:2}

And as then, so now, are over-grown alders frequently sought after, for
such buildings as lie continually under water, where it will harden like
a very stone; whereas being kept in any unconstant temper, it rots
immediately, because its natural humidity is of so near affinity with
its adventitious, as Scaliger assigns the cause. Vitruvius tells us,
that the morasses about Ravenna in Italy, were pil’d with this timber,
to superstruct upon, and highly commends it. I find also they us’d it
under that famous Bridge at Venice, the _Rialto_, which passes over the
_Gran-Canal_, bearing a vast weight. Jos. Bauhimus pretends, that in
tract of time, it turns to stone; which perhaps it may seem to be (as
well as other aquatick) where it meets with some lapidescant quality in
the earth and water.

5. The poles of alder are as useful as those of willows; but the coals
far exceed them, especially for gun-powder: The wood is likewise useful
for piles, pumps, hop-poles, water-pipes, troughs, sluces, small trays,
and trenchers, wooden-heels; the bark is precious to dyers, and some
tanners, and leather-dressers make use of it; and with it, and the
fruits (instead of galls) they compose an ink. The fresh leaves alone
applied to the naked soal of the foot, infinitely refresh the surbated
traveller. The bark macerated in water, with a little rust of iron,
makes a black dye, which may also be us’d for ink: The interior rind of
the black alder purges all hydropic, and serous humours; but it must be
dry’d in the shade, and not us’d green, and the decoction suffer’d to
settle two or three days, before it be drunk.

Being beaten with vinegar, it heals the itch certainly: As to other uses
the swelling bunches, which are now and then found in the old trees,
afford the inlayer pieces curiously chambletted, and very hard, _&c._
but the faggots better for the fire, than for the draining of grounds by
placing them (as the guise is) in the trenches; which old rubbish of
flints, stones, and the like gross materials, does infinitely exceed,
because it is for ever, preserves the drains hollow, and being a little
moulded over, will produce good grass, without any detriment to the
ground; but this is a secret, not yet well understood, and would merit
an express paragraph, were it here seasonable,

    ....._& jam nos inter opacas
    Musa vocat salices_.......

FOOTNOTES:

{157:1}

    Tunc alnos primum fluvii sensêre cavatas.

    _Georg. 1._

{157:2}

    Nec non & torrentem undam levis innatat alnus
    Missa Pado ............

    2.

CHAPTER XIX.

_Of the Withy, Sallow, Ozier, and Willow._

1. _Salix_: Since Cato has attributed the third place to the _salictum_,
preferring it even next to the very ortyard; and (what one would wonder
at) before even the olive, meadow, or corn-field it self (for _salictum
tertio loco, nempe post vineam, &c._) and that we find it so easily
rais’d, of so great, and universal use, I have thought good to be the
more particular in my discourse upon it; especially, since so much of
that which I shall publish concerning them, is derived from the long
experience of a most learned and ingenious person, from whom I
acknowledge to have received many of these hints. Not to perplex the
reader with the various names, Greek, Gallic, Sabin, Amerine, Vitex, &c.
better distinguish’d by their growth and bark; and by Latin authors all
comprehended under that of _salices_; our English books reckon them
promiscuously thus; the common-white willow, the black, and the
hard-black, the rose of Cambridge, the black-withy, the round-long
sallow; the longest sallow, the crack-willow, the round-ear’d shining
willow, the lesser broad-leav’d willow, silver sallow, upright
broad-willow, repent broad-leav’d, the red-stone, the lesser willow, the
strait-dwarf, the long-leav’d yellow sallow, the creeper, the black-low
willow, the willow-bay, and the ozier. I begin with the withy.

2. The withy is a reasonable large tree, (for some have been found ten
foot about) is fit to be planted on high banks, and ditch-sides within
reach of water and the weeping sides of hills; because they extend their
roots deeper than either sallows or willows. For this reason you shall
plant them at ten, or twenty foot distance; and though they grow the
slowest of all the twiggie trees, yet do they recompence it with the
larger crop; the wood being tough, and the twigs fit to bind strongly;
the very peelings of the branches being useful to bind arbor-poling, and
in topiary-works, vine-yards, espalier-fruit, and the like: And we are
told of some that grow twisted into ropes of 120 paces, serving instead
of cables. There are two principal sorts of these withies, the hoary,
and the red-withy, (which is the Greek) toughest, and fittest to bind,
whilst the twigs are flexible and tender.

3. Sallows grow much faster, if they are planted within reach of water,
or in a very moorish ground, or flat plain; and where the soil is (by
reason of extraordinary moisture) unfit for arable, or meadow; for in
these cases, it is an extraordinary improvement: In a word, where birch
and alder will thrive. Before you plant them, it is found best to turn
the ground with a spade; especially, if you design them for a flat. We
have three sorts of sallows amongst us, (which is one more than the
ancients challeng’d, who name only the black and white, which was their
_nitellina_) the vulgar round leav’d, which proves best in dryer banks,
and the hopping-sallows, which require a moister soil, growing with
incredible celerity: And a third kind, of a different colour from the
other two, having the twigs reddish, the leaf not so long, and of a more
dusky green; more brittle whilst it is growing in twigs, and more tough
when arriv’d to a competent size: All of them useful for the thatcher.

4. Of these, the hopping-sallows are in greatest esteem, being of a
clearer terse grain, and requiring a more succulent soil; best planted a
foot deep, and a foot and half above ground (though some will allow but
a foot) for then every branch will prove excellent for future setlings.
After three years growth (being cropped the second and third) the first
years increase will be ’twixt eight and twelve foot long generally; the
third years growth, strong enough to make rakes and pike-staves; and the
fourth for Mr. Blithe’s trenching plow, and other like utensils of the
husbandman.

5. If ye plant them at full height (as some do at four years growth,
setting them five or six foot length, to avoid the biting of cattel)
they will be less useful for streight staves, and for setlings, and make
less speed in their growth; yet this also is a considerable improvement.

6. These would require to be planted at least five foot distance, (some
set them as much more) and in the _quincunx_ order: If they affect the
soil, the leaf will come large, half as broad as a man’s hand, and of a
more vivid green, always larger the first year, than afterwards: Some
plant them sloping, and cross-wise like a hedge, but this impedes their
wonderful growth; and (though Pliny seems to commend it, teaching us how
to excorticate some places of each set, for the sooner production of
shoots) it is but a deceitful fence, neither fit to keep out swine nor
sheep; and being set too near, inclining to one another, they soon
destroy each other.

7. The worst sallows may be planted so near yet, as to be instead of
stakes in a hedge, and then their tops will supply their dwarfishness;
and to prevent hedge-breakers, many do thus plant them; because they
cannot easily be pull’d up, after once they have struck root.

8. If some be permitted to wear their tops five or six years, their
palms will be very ample, and yield the first and most plentiful relief
to bees, even before our abricots blossom. The hopping-sallows open, and
yield their palms before other sallows, and when they are blown (which
is about the _exit_ of May, or sometimes June) the palms (or
ὠλεσίκαρποι _frugiperdæ_, as Homer terms them for their extream
levity) are four inches long, and full of a fine lanuginous cotton. Of
this sort, there is a _salix_ near Dorking in Surrey, in which the
_julus_ bears a thick cottonous substance. A poor body might in an
hour’s space, gather a pound or two of it, which resembling the finest
silk, might doubtless be converted to some profitable use, by an
ingenious house-wife, if gather’d in calm evenings, before the wind,
rain and dew impair them; I am of opinion, if it were dry’d with care,
it might be fit for cushions, and pillows of chastity, for such of old
was the reputation of the shade of those trees.

9. Of these hopping sallows, after three years rooting, each plant will
yield about a score of staves, of full eight foot in length, and so
following, for use, as we noted above: Compute then how many fair
pike-staves, perches, and other useful materials, that will amount to in
an acre, if planted at five foot interval: But a fat and moist soil,
requires indeed more space, than a lean or dryer; namely, six or eight
foot distance.

10. You may plant setlings of the very first years growth; but the
second year they are better, and the third year, better than the second;
and the fourth, as good as the third; especially, if they approach the
water. A bank at a foot distance from the water, is kinder for them
than a bog, or to be altogether immers’d in the water.

11. ’Tis good to new-mould them about the roots every second, or third
year; but men seldom take the pains. It seems that sallows are more
hardy, than even willows and oziers, of which Columella takes as much
care as of vines themselves. But ’tis cheaper to supply the vacuity of
such accidental decays, by a new plantation, than to be at the charge of
digging about them three times a year, as that author advises; seeing
some of them will decay, whatever care be used.

12. Sallows may also be propagated like vines, by courbing, and bowing
them in arches, and covering some of their parts with mould, &c. Also by
cuttings and layers, and some years by the seeds likewise.

13. For setlings, those are to be preferr’d which grow nearest to the
stock, and so (consequently) those worst, which most approach the top.
They should be planted in the first fair and pleasant weather in
February, before they begin to bud; we about London begin at the latter
end of December. They may be cut in Spring for fuel, but best in Autumn
for use; but in this work (as of poplar) leave a twig or two; which
being twisted archwise, will produce plentiful sprouts, and suddenly
furnish a head.

14. If in our copp’ces one in four were a sallow set, amongst the rest
of varieties, the profit would recompence the care; therefore where in
woods you grub up trees, thrust in trunchions of sallows, or some
aquatic kind. In a word, an acre or two furnish’d with this tree, would
prove of great benefit to the planter.

15. The swift growing sallow is not so tough and hardy for some uses as
the slower, which makes stocks for gard’ners spades; but the other are
proper for rakes, pikes, mops, &c. Sallow-coal is the soonest consum’d;
but of all others, the most easie and accommodate for painters
scribbets, to design their work, and first sketches on paper with, &c.
as being fine, and apt to slit into pencils.

16. To conclude, there is a way of graffing a sallow-trunchion; take it
of two foot and half long, as big as your wrist; graff at both ends a
fig, and mulberry-cyon of a foot long, and so, without claying, set the
stock so far into the ground, as the plant may be three or four inches
above the earth: This (some affirm) will thrive exceedingly the first
year, and in three, be fit to transplant. The season for this curiosity
is February. Of the sallow (as of the lime-tree) is made the
shooe-maker’s carving or cutting-board, as best to preserve the edge of
their knives, for its equal softness every way.

17. Oziers, or the aquatick and lesser _salix_, are of innumerable
kinds, commonly distinguish’d from sallows, as sallows are from withies;
being so much smaller than the sallow, and shorter liv’d, and requiring
more constant moisture, yet would be planted in rather a dryish ground,
than over moist and spewing, which we frequently cut trenches to avert.
It likewise yields more limber and flexible twigs for baskets, flaskets,
hampers, cages, lattices, cradles, the bodies of coaches and wagons, for
which ’tis of excellent use, light, durable, and neat, as it may be
wrought and cover’d: for chairs, hurdles, stays, bands, the stronger for
being contus’d and wreathed, &c. likewise for fish wairs, and to support
the banks of impetuous rivers: In fine, for all wicker and twiggy works:

    _Viminibus salices_.............

18. But these sort of oziers would be cut in the new shoot: For if they
stand longer, they become more inflexible; cut them close to the head (a
foot, or so above earth) about the beginning of October; unless you will
attend till the cold be past, which is better; and yet we about London,
cut them in the most piercing seasons, and plant them also till
Candlemas, which those who do not observe, we judge ill husbands, as I
learn from a very experienc’d basket-maker; and in the decrease, for the
benefit of the workman, though not altogether for that of the stock, and
succeeding shoot: When they are cut, make them up into bundles, and give
them shelter; but such as are for white-work (as they call it) being
thus faggotted, and made up in bolts, as the term is, severing each sort
by themselves, should be set in water, the ends dipped; and indeed all
peel’d wares of the viminious kind, are not otherwise preserved from the
worm; but for black and unpeel’d, shelter’d under covert only, or in
some vault or cellar, to keep them fresh, sprinkling them now and then
in excessive hot weather: The peelings of the former, are for the use of
the gard’ner and cooper, or rather the splicings.

19. We have in England these three vulgar sorts; one of little worth,
being brittle, and very much resembling the fore-mentioned sallow, with
reddish twigs, and more greenish and rounder leaves: Another kind there
is, call’d perch, of limber and green twigs having a very slender leaf;
the third sort is totally like the second, only the twigs are not
altogether so green, but yellowish, and near the popinjay: This is the
very best for use, tough and hardy. But the most usual names by which
basket-makers call them about London, and which are all of different
species (therefore to be planted separately) are, the hard-gelster, the
horse-gelster, whyning or shrivell’d-gelster, the black-gelster, in
which Suffolk abounds. Then follow the golstones, the hard and the soft
golstone, (brittle, and worst of all the golstones) the sharp and
slender top’d yellow-golstone; the fine-golstone: Then is there the
yellow ozier, the green ozier, the snake, or speckled ozier,
swallow-tayl, and the Spaniard: To these we may add (amongst the number
of oziers, for they are both govern’d and us’d alike) the
Flanders-willow, which will arrive to be a large tree, as big as one’s
middle, the oftner cut, the better: With these our coopers, tie their
hoops to keep them bent. Lastly, the white-sallow; which being of a year
or two growth, is us’d for green-work; and if of the toughest sort, to
make quarter-can-hoops, of which our seamen provide great quantities,
&c.

20. These choicer sorts of oziers, which are ever the smallest, also the
golden-yellow, and white, which is preferr’d for propagation, and to
breed of, should be planted of slips of two or three years growth, a
foot deep, and half a yard length, in moorish grounds, or banks, or else
in furrows; so that (as some direct) the roots may frequently reach the
water; for _fluminibus salices_.......... though we commonly find it
rots them, and therefore never chuse to set them so deep as to scent it,
and at three or four foot distance.

21. The season for planting is January, and all February, though some
not till Mid-February, at two foot square; but cattle being excessively
liquorish of their leaves and tender buds, some talk of a graffing them
out of reach upon sallows, and by this, to advance their sprouting; but
as the work would consume time, so have I never seen it succeed.

22. Some do also plant oziers in their eights, like quick-sets, thick,
and (near the water) keep them not more than half a foot above ground;
but then they must be diligently cleansed from moss, slab, and ouze, and
frequently prun’d (especially the smaller spires) to form single shoots;
at least, that few, or none grow double; these they head every second
year about September, the autumnal cuttings being best for use: But
generally

23. You may cut withies, sallows and willows, at any mild and gentle
season, between leaf and leaf, even in Winter; but the most congruous
time both to plant and to cut them, is _crescente luna vere, circa
calendas Martias_; that is, about the new moon, and first open weather
of the early Spring.

24. It is in France, upon the Loire, where these eights (as we term
them) and plantations of oziers and withies are perfectly understood;
and both there, and in divers other countries beyond seas, they raise
them of seeds contain’d in their _juli_, or catkins, which they sow in
furrows, or shallow trenches, and it springs up like corn in the blade,
and comes to be so tender and delicate, that they frequently mow them
with a scyth: This we have attempted in England too, even in the place
where I live, but the obstinate and unmerciful weed did so confound
them, that it was impossible to keep them clean with any ordinary
industry, and so they were given over: It seems either weeds grow not so
fast in other countries, or that the people (which I rather think) are
more patient and laborious.

Note, that these _juli_, are not all of them seed-bearers, some are
sterile, and whatever you raise of them, will never come to bear; and
therefore by some they are called the male sort, as Mr. Ray (that
learned botanist) has observed. The ozier is of that emolument, that in
some places I have heard twenty pounds has been given for one acre; ten
is in this part an usual price; and doubtless, it is far preferable to
the best corn-land; not only for that it needs but once planting, but
because it yields a constant crop and revenue to the world’s end; and is
therefore in esteem of knowing persons, valu’d in purchase accordingly;
consider’d likewise how easily ’tis renew’d when a plant now and then
fails, by but pricking in a twig of the next at hand, when you visit to
cut them: We have in the parish near Greenwich, where I lately dwelt,
improv’d land from less than one pound, to near ten pounds the acre: And
when we shall reflect upon the infinite quantities of them we yearly
bring out of France and Flanders, to supply the extraordinary expence of
basket-work, &c. for the fruiterers, lime-burners, gardeners, coopers,
packers-up of all sorts of ware, and for general carriage, which seldom
last above a journey or two, I greatly admire gentlemen do no more think
of employing their moist grounds (especially, where tides near fresh
rivers are reciprocal) in planting and propagating oziers. To omit
nothing of the culture of this useful ozier, Pliny would have the place
to be prepared by trenching it a foot and half deep, and in that, to fix
the sets, or cuttings of the same length at six foot interval. These (if
the sets be large) will come immediately to be trees; which after the
first three years, are to be abated within two foot of the ground. Then
in April he advises to dig about them: Some raise them abundantly, by
laying poles of them in a boggy earth only: Of these they formerly made
vine-props, _juga_, as Pliny calls them, for archwise bending and
yoaking, as it were, the branches to one another; and one acre hath been
known to yield props sufficient to serve a vine-yard of 25 acres.

25. John Tradescant brought a small ozier from S. Omers in Flanders,
which makes incomparable net-works, not much inferior to the Indian
twig, or bent-works which we have seen; but if we had them in greater
abundance, we should haply want the artificers who could employ them,
and the dexterity to vernish so neatly.

26. Our common _salix_, or willow, is of two kinds, the white and the
black: The white is also of two sorts, the one of a yellowish, the other
of a browner bark: The black willow is planted of stakes, of three years
growth, taken from the head of an old tree, before it begins to sprout:
Set them of six foot high, and ten distant; as directed for the poplar.
Those woody sorts of willow, delight in meads and ditch-sides, rather
dry, than over-wet (for they love not to wet their feet, and last the
longer) yet the black sort, and the reddish, do sometimes well in more
boggy grounds, and would be planted of stakes as big as one’s leg, cut
as the other, at the length of five or six foot or more into the earth;
the hole made with an oaken-stake and beetle, or with an iron crow (some
use a long auger) so as not to be forced in with too great violence: But
first, the trunchions should be a little stop’d at both extreams, and
the biggest planted downwards: To this, if they are soaked in water two
or three days (after they have been siz’d for length, and the twigs cut
off ere you plant them) it will be the better. Let this be done in
February, the mould as well clos’d to them as possible, and treated as
was taught in the poplar. If you plant for a kind of wood, or copp’ce
(for such I have seen) set them at six foot distance, or nearer, in the
_quincunx_, and be careful to take away all suckers from them at three
years end: You may abate the head half a foot from the trunk, _viz._
three or four of the lustiest shoots, and the rest cut close, and bare
them yearly, that the three, four or more you left, may enjoy all the
sap, and so those which were spared, will be gallant pearches within two
years. Arms of four years growth, will yield substantial sets, to be
planted at eight or ten foot distance; and for the first three years
well defended from the cattle, who infinitely delight in their leaves,
green, or wither’d. Thus, a willow may continue twenty, or five and
twenty years, with good profit to the industrious planter, being headed
every four or five years; some have been known to shoot no less than
twelve foot in one year, after which, the old, rotten dotards may be
fell’d, and easily supply’d. But if you have ground fit for whole
copp’ces of this wood, cast it into double dikes, making every foss near
three foot wide, two and half in depth; then leaving four foot at least
of ground for the earth (because in such plantations the moisture should
be below the roots, that they may rather see, than feel the water) and
two tables of sets on each side, plant the ridges of these banks with
but one single table, longer and bigger than the collateral, _viz._
three, four, five or six foot high, and distant from each other, about
two yards. These banks being carefully kept weeded for the first two
years, till the plants have vanquish’d the grass, and not cut till the
third; you may then lop them traverse, and not obliquely, at one foot
from the ground, or somewhat more, and they will head to admiration; but
such which are cut at three foot height, are most durable, as least soft
and aquatick: They may also be graffed ’twixt the bark, or budded; and
then they become so beautiful, as to be fit for some kind of delightful