OF FOREST-TREES. 183 



fruit-bearers, and others, to abate that tpu).Aofxav:'a, which spends all the CHAP. ir. 

 juice in the leaves, to the prejudice of the rest of the parts. 



But after all this, let us hear what the learned and experienced squire 

 Brotherton has observed upon this article of pruning, and particularly of 

 the taking off the top ; that those trees which were so used, some years 

 before the severe frost of 1684, died ; those not so pruned, escaped : and 

 of other trees (having but a small head left) the rest of the boughs cleared, 

 the tops flourished, and the loose branches shred perished, and the 

 unpruned escaped : moreover, when the like pruning was tried on trees 

 twenty feet high, the difference of the increase was visible the following 

 summer ; but within seven or eight years' time, the difference was ex- 

 ceedingly great, and even prodigious, both in bark and branch, beyond 

 those trees that had been pruned. 



This, and the like, belonging to the care of the wood-ward, will mind 

 him of his continual duty ; which is to walk about, and survey his young 

 plantations daily ; and to see that all gaps be immediately stopped ; 

 trespassing cattle impounded ; and (where they are infested) the deer 

 chased out, &c. It is most certain that trees, preserved and governed 

 by this discipline, and according to the rules mentioned, would increase 

 the beauty of forests, and value of timber, more in ten or twelve years, 

 than all other imaginable plantations (accompanied with our usual neg- 

 lect) can do in forty or fifty. 



To conclude: in the time of this work, our ingenious arborator 

 should frequently incorporate, mingle, and unite the arms and branches 

 of some yovmg and flexible trees, which grow in consort, and near to one 

 another, by entering them into their mutual barks with a convenient 

 incision : this, especially about fields and hedge-rows, for fence and 

 ornament. Dr. Plot mentions some that do naturally, or rather indeed 

 accidentally, mingle thus ; nay, and so embrace and coalesce, as if they 

 issued out of the bowels of one another : such are two Beeches in the 

 way from Oxford to Reading, at Cain-end ; the bodies of which trees 

 springing from different roots, after they have ascended parallel to the 

 top, strangely unite together a great height from the ground, a transverse 

 piece of timber entering at each end of the bodies of the trees, and 

 growing jointly with them : the same is seen in Sycamores at New 



A a 2 



