OF FOREST-TREES. 213 



This to be done in the decrease of October, and reserved in bundles for CHAP. XV. 

 winter fodder. The wood of the White Poplar is sought of the sculptor, ^"^v"^ 

 and they saw both sorts into boards, which, where they lie dry, conti- 

 nue a long time. Of this material they also made shields of defence in 

 sword and buckler days. Dioscorides writes, that the bark chopped 

 small, and sowed in rills, well and richly manured and watered, will 

 produce a plentiful crop of mushrooms ; or warm water, in which yeast 

 is dissolved, cast upon a new-cut stump. It is to be noted that those 

 fungi, which spring from the putrid stumps of this tree, are not venemous, 

 (as of all or most other trees they are,) being gathered after the first 

 autumnal rains. There is a Poplar of paler green, and is the most proper 

 for watery ground ; it will grow of truncheons from two to eight feet 

 long, and, bringing a good lop in a short time, is by some preferred to 

 Willows. 



For the setting of these Mr. Cook advises the boring of the ground 

 with a sort of auger, to prevent the stripping of the bark from the stake 

 in planting ; a foot and a half deep, or more if great, (for some may be 

 eight or nine feet,) for pollards, cut sloping, and free of cracks at either 

 end. Two or three inches diameter is a competent bigness, and the 

 earth should be rammed close to them. 



Another expedient is by making drains in very moist ground, two 

 spade deep and three feet wide, casting up the earth between the drains, 

 sowing it the first year with oats to mellow the ground ; the next winter 

 setting it for copse, with these, any, or all the watery sorts of trees. Thus, 

 in four or five years, you will have a handsome fell ; and so successively. 

 It is in the former author, where the charge is exactly calculated, to whom 

 I refer the reader. I am informed that in Cheshire there grow many 

 stately and straight Black Poplars, that yield board and planks of an inch 

 and a half thickness ; so fit for flooring of rooms, as by some preferred to 

 Oak, for the whiteness and lasting, where they lie dry. 



3. They have a Poplar in Virginia of a very peculiar shaped leaf, as if 

 the point of it were cut off, which grows very well with the curious 

 amongst us to a considerable stature. I conceive it was first brought 

 over by John Tradescant, under the name of the Tulip-tree, (from the 

 likeness of its flower,) but is not, that I find, taken much notice of in any 



