216 NATURAL HISTORY. 



and then take them up in a warm day, and re 

 plant them in good ground ; and by that means the 

 former year s tree will be ripe, as by a new birth, 



when other trees of the same kind do but blossom. 

 ^ 



But this seemeth to have no great probability. 



444. It is reported, that if you take nitre, and 

 mingle it with water, to the thickness of honey, and 

 therewith anoint the bud after the vine is cut, it will 

 sprout forth within eight days. The cause is like 

 to be, if the experiment be true, the opening of 

 the bud and of the parts contiguous, by the spirit 

 of the nitre ; for nitre is, as it were, the life of 

 vegetables. 



445. Take seed, or kernels of apples, pears, 

 oranges ; or a peach, or a plum-stone, &c. and put 

 them into a squill, which is like a great onion, and 

 they will come up much earlier than in the earth 

 itself. This I conceive to be as a kind of grafting 

 in the root ; for as the stock of a graft yieldeth better 

 prepared nourishment to the graft than the crude 

 earth, so the squill doth the like to the seed. And 

 I suppose the same would be done by putting 

 kernels into a turnip or the like, save that the squill 

 is more vigorous and hot. It may be tried also, 

 with putting onion-seed into an onion-head, which 

 thereby, perhaps, will bring forth a larger and 

 earlier onion. 



446. The pricking of a fruit in several places, 

 when it is almost at its bigness, and before it ripen- 

 eth, hath been practised with success, to ripen the 

 fruit more suddenly. We see the example of the 



