242 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. waters, in tlieir liquid and slippery foundations. They may be placed at 

 ^^^"^ lour or five feet distance, and when they have struck root, you may cut 

 them, which will cause them to spring in clumps, and to shoot out into 

 many useful poles. But if you plant smaller sets, cut them not till they 

 are arrived to some competent bigness, and that in a proper season, 

 which is, for all the aquatics and soft woods, not till winter be well 

 advanced, in regard of their pithy substance : Therefore, such as you 

 shall have occasion to make use of before that period, ought to be well 

 grown, and felled with the earliest, and in the first quarter of the increas-. 

 ing moon, that so the successive shoot receive no prejudice. Some, 

 before they fell, disbark their Alders and other trees ; of which see 

 book iii. chap. iii. But there is yet another way of planting Alders after 

 the Jersey manner, which 1 received from a most ingenious gentleman of 

 that country ; and that is, by taking truncheons of two or three feet long, 

 at the beginning of winter, and to bind them in fagots, and place the 

 ends of them in water, till towards the spring, by which season they will 

 have contracted a swelling spire, or knur, about that part, which being 

 set, does (like the Gennet-moil apple-tree) never fail of growing and 

 striking root. There is a black sort more affected to woods and drier 

 grounds, and bears a black berry, not so frequently found ; yet growing 

 somewhere about Hampstead, as the learned Dr. Tancred Robinson 

 observes,. 



2. There are a sort of husbands who take excessive pains in stubbing 

 up their Alders, wherever they meet them in the boggy places of their 

 grounds, with the same indignation as one would extirpate the most 

 pernicious of weeds ; and when they have finished, know not how 

 to convert their best lands to more profit than this (seeming despicable) 

 plant might lead them to, were it rightly understood : Besides, the shadow 

 of this tree does feed and nourish the very grass which grows under it ; 

 and, being set and well plashed, is an excellent defence to the banks 

 of rivers; sO as I wonder it is not more practised about the Thames, 

 to fortify and prevent the mouldering of the walls from the violent 

 weather they are exposed to. 



3. You may cut aquatic trees every third or fourth year, and some 

 more frequently, as I shall show you hereafter. They should also 

 be abated within half a foot of the principal head, to prevent the perish- 



