VOL. VI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TBAN8ACT10N8. 581 



I do commend, for the advancing of cyder in richness both for taste and co- 

 lour, a new cask, provided it be made of timber very well seasoned, otherwise 

 it may spoil it utterly. I have often tried it, and found that sort of cask to im- 

 prove cyder. 



The best cyder I ever had was red streake grafted on a gen net moyle stock. 

 For as those kinds agree best, and the trees so grafted seldom canker, so the 

 fruit is far milder, and being ripe, both rich and large, and good to eat, and the 

 cyder is smoother, and abates in strength and harshness of that on the crab, and 

 needs less of mellowing before making, the stock in some degree altering and re- 

 claiming the nature of the fruit. For as an apple is best grafted on a crab, 

 which gives acrimony and quickness to the fruit, so a crab (and the red streake 

 is no other) grafted on an apple, receives thence gentleness, softness, size, and 

 an excellent alloy to the sharpness, and (as Mr. Evelyn calls it) the wickedness 

 of the fruit. I have by certain observation found, that crab-stocks grafted with 

 some sorts of fruit, which the soil likes not, they, not the soil, will all canker, 

 not only in the graft but the stock also, which if you graft again upon the for- 

 mer graft, with a fruit liking to the soil, will all heal and so become trees. And 

 it is certain by my observation that twenty pear stocks being wild, grafted young 

 with the same sort of pear, and twenty with another; the roots of each of those 

 of one sort will grow alike; and so those of the other. Generally those that 

 naturally grow high, as the bare -land pear, root deep, and all do so; those 

 whose heads are bushy and thick, as the summer bon-chretien, their roots run 

 wide, and are. matted below, and all are so. This diversity of the way of grow- 

 ing of the root must be by grafting, and could not be but by the intercourse of 

 sap, which it receives from the graft, and that cannot be but by the return of 

 the sap. 



But in this I desire rather the judgment of others, than give mine own, 

 because it is of a constant use to me, to be well assured herein. For if the 

 sap returns not, then may I prune or lop my trees in any time of the year 

 without loss of sap, which I take to be their blood, and that in which their 

 life consists. 



Concerning the season of transplanting, some advise October : but of late 

 years I have never begun to plant till Valentine's day, though a mild and good 

 winter. And I approved of late rather than early planting ; and as yet have 

 lost fewer by miscarriage. The cold in the winter kills more than the drought 

 in summer ; only the cold does the work, and we impute it to the drought ; 

 because they languish until summer from the fatal blow they receive by the 

 cold in winter, and then die. For, either we take our stocks out of woods, 

 or out of nurseries; in either place they lie warm. If you then in October 



