OF FOREST-TREES. 



101 



timber, as, doubtless, do our Oaks in the forest of Dean all others CHAP. III. 



of England : And much certainly there may reasonably be attributed ^-^V^^ 



to these advantages for the growth of timber, and of almost all other 



trees^ as we daily see by their general improsperity, where the ground 



is a hot gravel, and a loose earth. An Oak or Elm in such a place, 



shall not, in an hundred years, overtake one of fifty, planted in a proper 



soil ; though next to this, and, haply, before it, I prefer the good air. — 



Thus have they such vast Junipers in Spain ; and the Ash in some parts 



of the Levant (as of old near Troy) so excellent, as it was after 



mistaken for Cedar, so great was the difference from situation ' ; now the 



Cantabrian, or Spanish, exceeds any we have elsewhere in Europe. — 



And we shall sometimes, in our own country, see woods within a little 



of each other, and, to all appearance, growing on the same soil, where 



Oaks of twenty years growth, or forty, will, in the same bulk, contain 



their double in heart and timber ; and that in one the heart will not 



be so big as a man's arm, when the trunk exceeds a man's body. This 



ought therefore to be weighed in the first plantation of copses, and a good 



eye may discern it in the first shoot ; the difference proceeding, doubtless, 



from the variety of seed, and therefore great care should be had of its 



goodness, and that it be gathered from the best sort of trees, as was 



formerly hinted in the third section of the first chapter. 



9. Veterem arborem transplantare, was said of a difficult enterprise : 

 Yet before we take leave of this paragraph, concerning the transplanting 

 of great trees, let us show what is possible to be effected in this kind, 

 with cost and industry. Count Maurice, the late governor of Brasil for 

 the Hollanders, planted a grove near his delicious paradise of Friburgh, 

 containing six hundred Cocoa-trees of eight years growth, and fifty feet 

 high to the nearest bough ; these he wafted upon floats and engines four 

 long miles, and planted them so luckily that they bore abundantly the 



* It appears very extraordinary that situation should make the Ash resemble the Cedar ; 

 but Mr. Evelyn asserts this upon the authority of Pliny, who, speaking of the Ash, says, 

 "ea quidem, quae fit in Ida Troadis, in tantum Cedro similis, ut ementes fallat, cortice 

 ablato," Lib. xvi. Theophrastus, Lib. iii. cap. x. says, that the Yetv (/aJXo?) growing near 

 Troy, resembles the Cedar; so that Pliny must have been led into the above mistake by the 

 similitude in sound between f^iXo?, the Yew, and fteX/a, the Ash. 



