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TREATISE ON 



Chapter XXIII, 

 The elder TREE, 



HIS tree is little planted but for the fake of its berries, of 

 which they make wine, and likewife ufe them for fundry 

 other purpofes ; but it has other good qualities than thefe to re- 

 commend it, and in bad climates, and cold barren foils, it may- 

 become a valuable plant. 



It will grow in wet and dry, cold and hot, and indeed in all 

 kinds of foil, amazingly fall ; and in the moft forbidding litua- 

 tions, where thorns and the better kinds of hedge plants will not 

 fucceed, by putting in flakes of the Elder, of four, five, or fix 

 years growth, about three feet high, planted a foot deep, and 

 about a foot afunder, you may in three years have hedges that 

 will refift the wildefh cattle, and by their warmth much improve 

 the ground. Thefe hedges being cut clofe to the body of the 

 plants every third or fourth year, will branch out again more 

 numeroufly than ever, and afford a conftant fupply of fuel, 

 which, in many fituations, might prove a bleffing to the poor 

 inhabitants. It might alfo be ufed to much advantage in bet- 

 ter fituations intended for plantations of the moft valuable Fo- 

 reft-trees, by planting them thick in lines acrofs the mofl expo- 

 fed places of the field, where, by their quick growth, and the 

 excellent protedlion they afford againfl tempefluous and frofty 

 winds, they will highly contribute to the fpeedy advance of fuch 



