130 SYLVA BOOK i 



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, 



