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protects them from the winds, and causes them to shoot of extraordinaryheight, so as, in little more than forty years, they arrive to a loadof timber, provided they be sedulously and carefully cultivated, and thesoil propitious ; for an Elm does not thrive so well in the forest, as whereit may enjoy scope for the roots to dilate and spread at the sides,as in hedge-rows and avenues, where they have the air likewise free.—Note, that they spring abundantly by layers also.
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5. There is, besides these sorts we have named, one of a morescabrous harsh leaf, but very large, which becomes an huge tree,(frequent in the northern counties) and is distinguished by the nameof the Witch-Hasle in our Statute Books, as serving formerly to. makelong bows of: The timber is not so good as the first more vulgar;but the bark, at a proper season of the year, will serve to make coarse,bast-rope.
6. Of all the trees which grow in our woods, there is none which does:better suffer the transplantation than the Elm ; for you may removea tree of twenty years growth with undoubted succefs : It is an experi-ment I have made in a tree almost as big as my waist; but then youmust totally disbranch him, leaving all the summit entire; and, beingcareful to take him up with as much earth as you- can, refresh him with-abundance of water. This is an excellent and expeditious way .for-great persons to plant the accefses of their houses with : for, beingdisposed at sixteen or eighteen feet interval, they will, in a few years,bear goodly heads, and thrive to admiration. Some that are verycautious, emplaster the wounds of such over-grown Elms with a mixtureof clay and horse-dung, bound about them with a wisp of hay or fine;mofs; and I do not reprove it, provided they take care to temper it well,so as the vermine nestle not in it. But for more ordinary plantations,younger trees, which have their bark smooth and tender, clear of wensand tuberous bunches, (for those of that sort seldom come to be statelytrees,) about the scantling of your leg, and their heads trimmed at fiveor six feet height, are to be preferred before all other. Cato would havenone of these sorts of trees to be removed till they are five or six fingersjn thicknefs; others think they cannot take them too young; butexperience, the best mistrefs, tells us, that you can hardly plant an Elm