OF FOREST-TREES. 



269 



This English Yew-tree is easily produced of the seeds, washed and cH. XXI. 

 cleansed from their mucilage, then buried and dried in sand a little moist, 

 any time in December, and so kept in some vessel in the house all winter, 

 and in some cool shady place abroad all the summer ; sow them the 

 spring after. Some bury them in the ground like Haws ; it will com- 

 monly be the second winter before they peep, and then they rise with . 

 their caps on their heads. Being three years old, you may transplant 

 them, and form them into standards, knobs, walks, hedges, &c. in 

 all which works they succeed marvellous well, and are worth our 

 patience for their perennial verdure and durableness. I do again name 

 them for hedges, preferable, for beauty and a stiff defence, to any plant 

 I have ever seen, and may, upon that account, without vanity, be said 

 to have been the first who brought it into fashion, as well for defence, 

 as for a succedaneum to Cypress, whether in hedges or pyramids, conic 

 spires, bowls, or what other shapes, adorning the parks or larger avenues 

 with their lofty tops, thirty feet high, and braving all the efforts of the 

 most rigid winter, which Cypress cannot weather. I have said how long 

 lasting they are, and easily to be shaped and clipped ; nay, when cut 

 down, they thrive : But those which are most superannuated, and per- 

 haps of many hundred years standing, perish if so used. 



H OLLY^. 



Above all the natural greens which enrich our home-born store, there 

 is none certainly to be compared to the Agrifolium (or Acuifolium rather) 



" Of the Ilex there are five species, but I shall only take notice of two : 



1. ILEX CaquifoliumJ foliis ovatis acutis spinosis. Lin. Sp. PI. 181. Jlex aculeata 

 baccifera. C. B. P. 42$. Pricklij berry-bearing Ilex. The common holly. 



The common HOLLY grows naturally in woods and forests in many parts of England, where 

 it rises from twenty to thirty feet high, and sometimes more, but the ordinary height is not 

 above twenty-five feet. The stem by age becomes large, and is covered with a greyish 

 smooth bark ; and those trees, which are not lopped or browsed by cattle, are commonly 

 furnished with branches the greatest part of their length, so form a sort of cone; the 

 branches are garnished with oblong oval leaves about three inches long, and one and a' half 

 broad, of a lucid green on their upper surface, but pale on their under, having a strong 

 midrib : the edges are indented and waved, with sharp thorns terminating each of the 

 points, so that some of the thorns are raised upward and others are bent downward ; these 

 being very stiff cannot be handled without pain. The leaves are placed alternate on every 



