OF FOREST-TREES. 



125 



protects them from the winds, and causes them to shoot of extraordinary CHAP. 

 height, so as, in little more than forty years^ they arrive to a load ^"^^ 

 of timber, provided they be sedulously and carefully cultivated, and the 

 soil propitious ; for an Elm does not thrive so well in the forest, as where 

 it may enjoy scope for the roots to dilate and spread at the sides, 

 as in hedge-rows and avenues, where they have the air likewise free. — ^ 

 Note, that they spring abundantly by layers also. 



5. There is, besides these sorts we have named, one of a more 

 scabrous harsh leaf, but very large, which becomes an huge tree, 

 (frequent in the northern counties,) and is distinguished by the name 

 of the Witch-Hasle in our Statute Books, as serving formerly to make 

 long bows of: The timber is not so good as the first more vulgar ; 

 but the bark, at a proper season of the year, will serve to make coarse 

 bast-rope. 



6. Of all the trees which grow in our woods, there is none which does 

 better suffer the transplantation than the Elm ; for you may remove 

 a tree of twenty years growth with undoubted success : It is an experi- 

 ment I have made in a tree almost as big as my waist ; but then you 

 must totally disbranch him, leaving all the summit entire, and, being 

 careful to take him up with as much earth as you can, refresh him with 

 abundance of water. This is an excellent and expeditious way for 

 great persons to plant the accesses of their houses with : for, being 

 disposed at sixteen or eighteen feet interval, they will, in a few years, 

 bear goodly heads, and thrive to admiration. Some that are very 

 cautious, emplaster the wounds of such over-grown Elms with a mixture 

 of clay and horse-dung, bound about them with a wisp of hay or fine 

 moss ; and I do not reprove it, provided they take care to temper it well, 

 so as the vermine nestle not in it. But for more ordinary plantations, 

 younger trees, which have their bark smooth and tender, clear of wens 

 and tuberous branches, (for those of that sort seldom come to be stately 

 trees,) about the scantling of your leg, and their heads trimmed at five 

 or six feet height, are to be preferred before all other. Cato would have 

 none of these sorts of trees to be removed till they are five or six fingers 

 in thickness ; others think they cannot take them too young ; but 

 experience, the best mistress, tells us, that you can hardly plant an Elm 



