180 



ON THE AGE AND 



with the venerable oak. Many kinds of fruit- 

 trees, and even some that rise to a competent size, 

 much resembling timber, are, nevertheless, exceed- 

 ingly short-lived ; so that though some few of the 

 mulberry^trees planted in the reign of King James 

 the First may be yet in a fruit-bearing state, and 

 also some of the fig-trees at Lambeth palace 



" The country of Lombardy is perfectly flat, a rich soil, 

 fine pastures and corn-fields, abundance of Vines, and white 

 mulberry-trees for the silk-worms, the Vines running up their 

 branches. This country is the finest we saw in Italy, unless 

 you'll except the Campagna Felice about Naples, 



" We observed few timber-trees,* : only elms and poplars, 

 which support the Vine-branches, as I observed before, of the 

 mulberry-trees. The roads are very broad and even, and most 

 pleasant travelling in the summer; but some of them deep 

 enough in the winter: the hedges by the road-side are many of 

 them cut, and managed with a great deal of exactness. The 

 Vines run up the bodies of the trees, and intermix themselves 

 with their branches (alias maritant populos) ; and the extremi- 

 ties are drawn out from tree to tree, and hang in festoons be- 

 tween them along the road hedges. From those hedges there 

 go rows of trees along the grounds, at about forty or fifty 

 yards' distance from each other ; the Vines all running up their 

 bodies. And here, besides the festoons hanging from tree to 

 tree, the Vine-branches are extended right and left, and 

 fastened to a row of stakes on each side, which run parallel to 

 the trees ; and these stakes are as so many pillars, supporting 

 a sort of pent-house, or oblique roof, which is formed by the 

 Vine-branches on each side of the trees. Thus are the grounds 

 disposed and planted on both sides the road, and the trees 

 with the Vines managed in this sort of natural architecture, 

 generally speaking, all over Lombardy." 



Wright's Travels, vol. i. p. 31. 



