30 



A DISCOURSE 



II. tree with all the former advantages ; if sparing the shaft altogether, you 

 diligently cut away all the forked branches, reserving only such as radiate 

 directly from the body, which being shorn, and clipped in due season, will 

 render the tree very beautiful ; and though more subject to obey the 

 shaking winds, yet the natural spring of it does immediately redress it, 

 without the least discomposure ; and this is a secret worth the learning 

 of gardeners, who subject themselves to the trouble of stakes and binding, 

 which is very inconvenient. Thus may you form them into topiary 



works, limits, and boundaries Metas imitata Cupressus. You may 



likewise form them into hedges by sowing the seeds in a shallow furrow, 

 and plucking up the supernumeraries, where they come too close and 

 thick : for in this work it will suffice to leave them within a foot of eacli 

 other ; and when they are risen about a yard in height, (which may be to 

 the half of your palisado,) cut off their tops, as you are taught, and keep 

 the sides clipped, that they may ascend but by degrees, and thicken at 

 the bottom as they climb. Thus they wiU present you (in half a dozen 

 or eight years) with incomparable hedges, because they are perpetually 

 gTcen, able to resist the winds better than most which I know, the HoUy 

 only excepted, which indeed has no peer. 



5. For when I say winds, I mean their fiercest gust, not their cold : 

 For though it be said, Brmndque illcesa Cupressus, and that indeed 

 no frost impeaches them, (for they grow even on the snowy tops of Ida,) 

 yet our cruel eastern winds do sometimes mortally invade those which 

 have been late clipped, seldom the untouched, or that were dressed in the 

 spring only. The March and April winds, (in the years 1663 and 1665,) 

 accompanied with cruel frosts and cold blasts, for the space of more than 

 two months, night and day, did not, amongst near a thousand Cypresses 

 growing in my garden, kill above three or four, which, for being very 

 late cut to the quick, (that is, the latter end of October,) were raw 

 of their wounds, took cold, and gangrened ; some few others, which 

 were a little smitten towards the tops, might have escaped all their 

 blemishes, had my gardener capped them but with a wisp of hay or 

 straw, as in my absence I commanded. As for the frost of those 

 winters, (than which I believe there was never known a more cruel 

 and deadly piercing one since England had a name,) it did not touch 

 a Cypress of mine, tiU it joined forces with that destructive wind : 



