268 S Y L V A BOOK n 



an hundred years old in England: Methinks this should 

 be of wonderful incitement. It was 680 years after 

 the foundation of Rome, e'er Italy had tasted a cherry 

 of their own, which being then brought thither ' 

 out of Pontus (as the above-mention'd filberts were) 

 did after 120 years, travel ad ultimo s Britannos. 



8. We had our first myrtils out of Greece, and 

 cypress from Crete, which was yet a meer stranger 

 in Italy, as Pliny reports, and most difficult to be 

 raised ; which made Cato to write more concerning 

 the culture of it, than of any other tree : Notwith- 

 standing, we have in this country of ours, no less than 

 three sorts, which are all of them easily propagated, 

 and prosper very well, if they are rightly ordered ; 

 and therefore I shall not omit to disclose one secret, 

 as well to confute a popular error, as for the instruct- 

 ion of our gardeners. 



9. The tradition is, that the cypress (being a symbol 

 of mortality, ferales & invtsas, they should say of the 

 contrary) is never to be cut, for fear of killing it. 

 This makes them to impale, and wind them about, 

 like so many ^Egyptian mummies ; by which means, 

 the inward parts of the tree being heated, for want 

 of air and refreshment, it never arrives to any perfect- 

 ion, but is exceedingly troublesome, and chargeable 

 to maintain ; whereas indeed, there is not a more 

 tonsile and governable plant in nature ; for the cypress 

 may be cut to the very roots, and yet spring afresh, 

 as it does constantly in Candy, if not yielding suckers 

 (as Bellonius affirms,) I rather think produced by the 

 seeds, which the mother-trees shed at the motion of 

 the stem in the felling : And this we find was the 



1 A cerasunte. Indeed Servius, 1. 2. Geor. i. says, it was earlier in Italy ; 

 but hard and wild and usually call'd coma, and sometimes corno-cerosa, perhaps 

 the black-cherry. 



