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and thick : For in this work, it will suffice to leave 

 them within a foot of each other ; and when they 

 are risen about a yard in height, (which may be to 

 the half of your palisado) cut off their tops, as you 

 are taught, and keep the sides clipp'd, that they 

 ascend but by degrees, and thicken at the bottom as 

 they climb. Thus, they will present you (in half a 

 dozen or eight years) with incomparable hedges ; 

 because they are perpetually green, able to resist the 

 winds better than most which I know, the holly only 

 excepted, which indeed has no peer. 



10. For, when I say winds, I mean their fiercest 

 gusts, not their cold : For though it be said, brumdque 

 illtzsa cupressus, and that indeed no frost impeaches 

 them (for they grow even on the snowy tops of 

 Ida,) yet our cruel eastern winds do sometimes mort- 

 ally invade them which have been late clipp'd, seldom 

 the untouch'd or that were dressed in the Spring 

 only : The effects of March and April winds (in the 

 Year 1663, and 1665) accompanied with cruel frosts, 

 and cold blasts, for the space of more than two months, 

 night and day, did not amongst near a thousand 

 cypresses (growing in my garden) kill above three or 

 four, which for being very late cut to the quick 

 (that is, the latter end of October) were raw of their 

 wounds, took cold, and gangreen'd ; some few others 

 which were a little smitten towards the tops, might 

 have escaped all their blemishes, had my gardener 

 capp'd them but with a wisp of hay or straw, as in 

 my absence I commanded. As for the frost of those 

 winters (than which I believe there was never known 

 a more cruel and deadly piercing since England had 

 a name) it did not touch a cypress of mine, till it 

 join'd forces with that destructive wind : Therefore 



