CHAP, x S Y L V A 113 



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. vm.) 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 sur- 

 prizing whiteness, greatly relieving the sedulous bees, 

 and attracting birds. 



