300 S Y L V A BOOK ii 



ness : I do again name them for hedges, preferable for 

 beauty, and a stiff defence to any plant I have ever 

 seen, and may upon that account (without vanity) be 

 said to have been the first which brought it into 

 fashion, as well for defence, as for a succedaneum to 

 cypress, whether in hedges, or pyramids, conic-spires, 

 bowls or what other shapes, adorning the parks or 

 larger avenues, with their lofty tops 30 foot high, 

 and braving all the efforts of the most rigid Winter, 

 which cypress cannot weather ; I have said how long 

 lasting they are, and easily to be shap'd and clipp'd ; 

 nay cut down, revive : But those which are much 

 superannuated, and perhaps of many hundred years 

 standing, perish if so us'd. 



7. He that in Winter should behold some of our 

 highest hills in Surrey, clad with whole woods of 

 these two last sort of trees, for divers miles in circuit 

 (as in those delicious groves of them, belonging to the 

 Honourable, my noble friend, the late Sir Adam 

 Brown of Bech-worth-Castle, from Box-hill) might 

 without the least violence to his imagination, easily 

 fancy himself transported into some new or enchanted 

 country ; for, if any spot of England, 



1 'Tis here 



Eternal Spring, and Summer all the year. 



Of which I have already spoken in the former section. 



8. But, above all the natural greens which inrich 

 our home-born store, there is none certainly to be 

 compar'd to the agrtfo/ittm, (or acuifolium rather) our 

 holly so spontaneously growing here in this part of 

 Surrey, that the large vale near my own dwelling, 



1 Hie ver perpetuum, atque alienis mensibus aestas. 



