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. timber, as, doubtlefs, do our Oaks in the forest of Dean all others chap. in.of England; And much certainly there may reasonably be attributed vto these advantages for the growth of timber, and of almost all othertrees, as we daily see by their general improsperity, where the groundis a hot gravel, and a loose earth. An Oak or Elm in such a place,shall not, in an hundred years, overtake one of fifty, planted in a propersoil; though next to this, and, haply, before it, I prefer the good air.—
Thus have they such vast junipers in Spain ; and the Ash in some partsof the Levant (as of old near Troy) so excellent, as it was aftermistaken for Cedar, so great was the difference from situation z ; now theCantabrian, or Spanish, exceeds any we have elsewhere in Europe. —
And we shall sometimes, in our own country, see woods within a littleof each other, and, to all appearance, growing on the same soil, whereOaks of twenty years growth, or forty, will, in the same bulk, containtheir double in heart and timber;, and. that in one the heart will notbe so big as a man’s arm, when the trunk exceeds a man’s body. Thisought therefore to be weighed in. the first plantation of copses, and a goodeye may discern it in the first shoot; the difference proceeding, doubtlefs,from the variety of seed, and therefore great care should be had of itsgoodnefs, and that it be gathered from the best sort of trees, as wasformerly hinted in the third section of the first chapter.
9. Veteran arborem transplantare, was said of a difficult enterprize:
Yet before we take leave of this paragraph, concerning the transplantingof great trees, let us show what is pofsible to be effected in this, kind,with cost and industry. Count Maurice, the late governor of Brasil forthe Hollanders, planted a grove near hi's delicious paradise of Friburgh,containing six hundred Cocoa-trees of eighty years growth, and fifty feethigh to the nearest bough ;• these he wafted upon floats and engines four,long miles, and planted them so luckily that they bore abundantly the
“It appears very extraordinary that situation should make the Ash resemble the CeJar ;.but Mr. Evelyn afserts this upon the authority of Pliny , who speaking of the Ash, says,“ ea quidem, quae fit in Ida Troadis, in tanfum Cedro similis, ut ementes fallat, corticeablato, Lib. xvi. Theophrastus, Lib. iii. cap. x. says, that the Yew (jutes ) growing nearTroy, resembles the Cedar; so that Pliny must have been led into the above mistakeby the similitude in sound betweenquiao?, the Yew , and uttex, the Ash.