258 A DISCOimSE 



BOOK I. and in that to fix the sets, or cuttings, of the same length at six feet 

 '^'"^'''^^ interval. These, if the sets be large, will come immediately to be trees ; 



which after the first three years are to be abated within two feet of the 

 ground; then in April he advises to dig about them. Some raise 

 them abundantly by laying poles of them in a boggy earth only: 

 Of these they formerly made vine-props, Juga, as Pliny calls them, 

 for arch-wise bending, and yoaking, as it were, the branches to one 

 another ? and one acre hath been kown to yields props sufficient to serve 

 a vineyard of twenty-five acres. 



24. John Tradescant brought a small Ozier from St. Omer's, in 

 Flanders, which makes incomparable net-works, not much inferior 

 to the Indian twig, or bent-works, which we have seen ; but if we had 

 them in greater abundance, we should haply want the artificers who 

 could employ them, and the dexterity to varnish so neatly. 



WILLOW. 25. Our common salix, or willow, is of two kinds, the White and 

 the Black: The White is also of two sorts, the one of a yellowish, the other 

 of a browner bark : The Black Willow is planted of stakes of three 

 years' growth, taken from the head of an old tree, before it begins 

 to sprout ; set them of six feet high, and ten distant, as directed for the 

 Poplar. Those woody sorts of Willow delight in meads and ditch-sides, 

 rather dry than over wet, (for they love not to wet their feet, and last the 

 longer,) yet the black sort, and the reddish, do sometimes weU in more 

 boggy grounds, and should be planted of stakes as big as one's leg, cut 

 as the other, at the length of five or six feet ; the hole made with 

 an oaken stake and beetle, or with an iron crow, (some use a long 

 auger,) so as not to be forced in with too great violence. But first, the 

 truncheons should be a little sloped at both extremes, and the biggest 

 planted downwards : To this, if they are soaked in water two or three 

 days, (after they have been sized for length, and the twigs cut off before 

 you plant them,) it will be the better. Let this be done in February, 

 the mould as well closed to them as possible, and treated as was taught 

 in the Poplar. If you plant for a kind of wood, or copse, for such I have 

 seen, set them at six feet distance, or nearer in the quincunx, and 

 be careful to take away all suckers from them at three years' end ; you 

 may abate the head half a foot from the trunk ; viz. three or four of the 

 lustiest shoots, and the rest cut close, and bare them yearly, that the 



