CHAP, ii S Y L V A 27 



hopes of the husbandman, that he many times digs 

 up the platts and beds in which they were sown, 

 despairing of a crop, sometimes ready to spring and 

 come up, as I have found by experience to my loss : 

 Those of hard shell and integument will lie longer 

 buried than others ; for so the libanus cedar, and 

 most of the coniferous firs, pines, fife, shed their 

 seeds late, and sometimes remain two winters and as 

 many summers, to open their scales glued so fast 

 together, without some external application of fire or 

 warm water, which is yet not so natural as when they 

 open of themselves. The same may be observed of 

 some minuter seeds, even among the olitories ; as 

 that of parsley, which will hardly spring in less than 

 a year ; so beet-seed, part in the second and third, 

 fife, which upon inspecting the skins and membranes 

 involving them, would be hard to give a reason for. 

 To accelerate this, they use imbibitions of piercing 

 spirits, salts, emollients, fife, not only to the seeds, 

 but to the soil, which we seldom find much signify, 

 but either to produce abortion or monsters ; and 

 being forc'd to hasty birth, become nothing so hardy, 

 healthful and lasting, as the conception and birth 

 they receive from nature. These observations pre- 

 mis'd in general, after I have recommended to our 

 industrious planters the appendix or table of the 

 several sorts of soil and places that are proper, or at 

 least may seem so ; or that are unfit for certain kinds 

 of trees, (as well foresters and others, annexed to this 

 work) I should proceed to particulars, and boldly 

 advance into the thickest of the forest, did not 

 method seem to require something briefly to be 

 spoken of trees in general, as they are under the 

 name of plants and vegetables, especially such as we 



