OF FOREST-TREES. 



53 



spare the tops ; for this does not only greatly establish your plants, by 

 diverting the sap to the roots, but likewise frees them from the injury 

 and concussions of the winds, and makes them to produce handsome, 

 straight shoots, infinitely preferable to such as are abandoned to nature 

 and accident, without this discipline : By this means the Oak will become 

 excellent timber, shooting into straight and single stems : The Chestnut, 

 Ash, &c. multiply into poles, which you may reduce to standards at 

 pleasure. To this I add, that as oft as you make your annual trans- 

 planting out of the nursery, by drawing forth the choicest stock, the 

 remainder will be improved by a due stirring and turning of the mould 

 about their roots. 



But that none be discouraged, who may, upon some accident, be 

 desirous or forced to transplant trees, where the partial or unequal ground 

 does not afford sufficient room or soil to make the pits equally capacious, 

 (and so apt to nourish and entertain the roots, as where are no impedi- 

 ments,) the worthy Mr. Brotherton, (whom we shall have occasion to 

 mention more than once in this treatise,) speaking of the increase and 

 improvement of roots, tells us of a large Pinaster, two feet and a half in 

 diameter, and about sixty feet in height, the lowest boughs being thirty 

 feet above the ground, wliich did spread and flourish on all sides alike, 

 though it had no root at all towards three quarters of its situation, and 

 but one quarter only into which it expanded its roots so far as to seventy 

 and eighty feet from the body of the tree : the reason was, its being 

 planted just within the square angle of the corner of a deep, thick, and 

 strong stone-wall, which was a kind of w^harfing against a river running 

 by it, and so could have nourishment but from one quarter. And this I 

 likewise might confirm of two Elms, planted by me about thirty-five years 

 since ; which being little bigger than walking-staves, and set on the 

 very brink of a ditch or narrow channel, not always full of water, wharfed 

 with a M'^all of a brick and half in thickness to keep the bank from falling 

 in, are since grown to goodly and equally spreading trees of near two 

 feet diameter solid timber, and of stature proportionable. The difference 

 between these, and that of the Pine, being their having one quarter 

 more of mould for the roots to spread in ; but which is not at all disco- 

 vered by the exuberance of the branches in either part. — But to return 

 to planting where are no such obstacles. 



