OF FOREST-TREES. 7;

may be eight or nine Foot) for ‘Pollards , cut sloping, and free ofC h. XV.Cracks at either End : Two' or three Inches ‘Diameter, is a competentBigness, and the Earth should be rammed close to them

Another Expedient is, by making Drains in very moist Ground, twoSpade deep, and three Foot wide, casting up the Earth between theDrains, sowing it the first Year with Oats, to mellow the Ground; thenext Winter setting it for Copse, with these, any, or all the watrySorts of Trees: thus, in four or five Years, you will have a handsomeFell, and so successively. It is in the former Author, where the Chargeis exactly calculated, to whom I refer the Reader. I am informed, thatin Chejhire there grow many stately and streight black Poplars , whichthey call Peplurus, that yield Boards and Planks of an Inch and halfThickness; so fit for Flooring of Rooms, 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 Curi-ous amongst us to a considerable Stature. I conceive it was first broughtover by John Tradescant, under the Name of th eTulip-tree (from theLikenels of its Flower ) but is not, that I find, taken much Notice ofin any of our Herbals : I wish we had more of them; but they are dif-ficult to elevate at first.

4. The Aspen only (which is that Kind of Lybica, or white Poplar )bearing a smaller and more tremulous Leaf (by the French call d la Trem-ble, or Quaker) thrusts down a more searching Foot, and inthislikewi ediffers, that he takes it ill to have his Head cut off: Pliny would haveshort Trunchions couched two Foot in the Ground (but first two aysdried) at one Foot and half Distance, and then moulded over.

5. There is something a finer Sort of white Pop lar i which th eDutchcall Abele, and we have of Jate Abele much transported out ot Hol-land: These are also best propagated of Slips from the Roots, the least

of which will take, and may in March, at three or four Years Growth,be transplanted.

6 . In Flanders (not in France, as a late Author pretends) they havelarge Nurseries of them, which first they plant at one Foot Distance,the Mould light and moist, by no means clayie, in which, though theymay shoot up tall, yet for want of Root, they never spread; for, as Isaid, they must be interred pretty deep, not above three Inches aboveGround, and kept clean, by pruning them to the middle Shoot for thefirst two Years, and so till the third or fourth. When you transplant,place them at eight, ten or twelve Foot Interval : They will likewi egrow of Layers, and even of Cuttings in very moist Places. In tgieeTears they will come to an incredible Altitude; in twelve be as big asyour Middle; and in eighteen or twenty, arrive to full Perfection. A hpect-men of this Advance we have had of an Abele Tree at Stan, whichbeing lopped in February 1651, did, by the End of October 51, pro-duce Branches as big a Man’s Wrist, and seventeen Foot in Length ; forwhich Celerity we may recommend them to such late Builders as feattheir Houses in naked and unsheltered Places, and that would put aGuise of Antiquity upon any new Inclosure ; since by these, whilst aMan is in a Voyage of no long Continuance, his House and Lands maybe so covered, as to be hardly known at his Return. But as they thusincrease in Bulk, their Value (as the Italian Poplar has taught us) ad-vances likewise ; which after the first seven Years, is annually worth

T Twelve