OF FOREST-TREES. 



31 



therefore, for caution, clip not your Cypresses late in autumn, and clothe CHAP. i. 

 theiUj if young, against these winds ; for the frosts they only discolour """^V^ 

 them, but seldom or never kill them, as by long experience I have 

 found. Nor altogether despair of the resurrection of a Cypress subverted 

 by the wind, for some have redressed themselves ; and one (as Ziphilinus 

 mentions) rose the very next day, which happening about the reign of 

 the Emperor Vespasian, was esteemed an happy omen. But of such 

 accidents more hereafter. 



6. If you affect to see your Cypress in standard, and grow wild, (which 

 may in time come to be of a large substance, fit for the most immortal 

 of timber, and indeed are the least obnoxious to the rigours of our winters, 

 provided you never clip or disbranch them,) plant of the reputed male 

 sort ; it is a tree which will prosper wonderfully where the ground is hot 

 and gravelly, though, as we said, he be nothing so beautiful ; and it is of 

 this that the Venetians make their greatest profit. 



7. I have already shewed how this tree is to be raised from the seed ; 

 but there was another method amongst the ancients, who, as I told you, 

 were wont to make great plantations of them for their timber : I have 

 practised it myself, and therefore describe it. 



8. If you receive your seed in the roundish small nuts, which use to be 

 gathered thrice a-year, but seldom ripening with us, expose them to the 

 sun till they gape, or near a gentle fire, or put them in warm water, 

 as was directed for those of Cedar, by which means the seeds will be 

 easily shaken out ; for if you have them open before, they do not yield 

 you half their crop. About the beginning of April, or before, if the 

 weather be showery, prepare an even bed, which being made of fine 

 earth, clap down with your spade, as gardeners do for purslain seed ; (of 

 old they rolled it with a stone or cylinder;) upon this strew your seeds 

 pretty thick, then sift over them some more mould, somewhat better 

 tlian half an inch in height. Keep them duly watered after sun-set, 

 unless the season do it for you ; and after one years growth, for they 

 wiU 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 eighteen 

 inches distance, in even lines, keeping them watered and moist till they 



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