32 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK II. are rooted, and fit to be removed. In watering them, I give you this 

 '"^'^''"^^ caution, which may also serve you for most tender and dehcate 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 followed, 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 strearn by the foot of it, 

 (as the water there is in abundance tractable,) which made the trees, 

 as I was credibly informed, arrive to seven or eight feet 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 arescit ; meaning in low and moorish places, stiff and cold 

 earth, &;c. where they never thrive. 



9. There is also a Virginian Cypress, of an enormous height, beautiful 

 and very spreading, the branches and leaves large and regular, with the 

 clogs resembling the Cypress ; and though the timber be somewhat 

 coarse and cross-grained, it is, when polished, very agreeable, as I can 

 shew in a very large table made out of the planks of a spur only ; and 

 have experience of its lastingness, though exposed both to the air and 

 weather, 



10. What the uses of this timber are, for chests and other utensils, 

 harps, and divers other musical instruments, (it being a very sonorous 

 wood, and therefore employed for organ-pipes, as heretofore for sup- 

 porters of vines, poles, rails, and planks, resisting the worm, moth, and 

 all putrefaction to eternity,) the Venetians sufficiently understood ; who 

 did every twentieth year, and oftener, (the Romans every thirteenth,) 

 make a considerable revenue of it out of Candy : and certainly a very 

 gainful commodity it was, when the fell of a Cupressetum was heretofore 



- reputed a good daughter's portion, and the plantation itself called Z)qs 

 JilicB. But there was in Candy a vast wood of these trees, belonging 

 to the Republic, by malice or accident, (or perhaps by solar heat, as were 

 many woods, seventy-four years after, even here in England,) set on fire, 



