272 S Y L V A BOOK ii 



which being made of fine-earth, clap] down with your 

 spade, as gardeners do for purselain seed (of old they 

 roll'd it with some stone, or cylinder) ; upon this 

 strew your seeds pretty thick ; then sift over them 

 some more mould, somewhat better than half an inch 

 in height : Keep them duly watered after sunset, 

 unless the season do it for you ; and after one year's 

 growth, (for they will be an inch high in little more 

 than two months) you may transplant them where 

 you please : If in the nursery, set them at a foot or 

 1 8 inches distance in even lines, kept watered and 

 moist, 'till they are well rooted, and fit to be remov'd. 

 In watering them, I give you this caution (which 

 may also serve you for most tender and delicate seeds) 

 that you bedew them rather with a broom, or 

 spergitory, than hazard the beating them out with 

 the common watering-pot ; and when they are well 

 come up, be but sparing of water : Be sure likewise 

 that you cleanse them when the weeds are very 

 young and tender, lest instead of purging, you quite 

 eradicate your cypress : We have spoken of watering, 

 and indeed whilst young, if well follow'd, they will 

 make a prodigious advance. When that long and 

 incomparable walk of cypress at Frascati near Rome, 

 was first planted, they drew a small stream (and 

 indeed irrigare is properly thus, aquam inducere riguis 

 (i. e.) in small gutters and rills) by the foot of it, (as 

 the water there is in abundance tractable) and made 

 it (as I was credibly inform'd) arrive to seven or eight 

 foot height in one year ; (which does not agree with 

 the epithet, lenta cupressus] ; but with us, we may not 

 be too prodigal ; since, being once well taken, they 

 thrive best in our sandy, light and warmest grounds, 

 whence Cardan says, juxta aquas aresclt ; meaning in 



