CHAP, xix SYLVA 169 



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 suffic- 

 ient 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 ar- 

 tificers 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 



