30

A DISCOURSE

book ii. tree with all the former advantages ; if sparing the shaft altogether, youdiligently cut away all the forked branches,reserving only such as radiatedirectly from the body, which being shorn, and dipt in due season, willrender the tree very beautiful; and though more subject to obey theshaking winds, yet the natural spring of it does immediately redrefs it,- without the least discomposure ; and this is a secret worth the learningof gardeners, who subject themselves to the trouble of stakes and binding,which is very inconvenient. Thus may you form them into topiary-

works, limits and boundaries- Metas imitata Cuprefsus. You may

likewise form them into hedges by sowing the seeds in a shallow furrow,and plucking up the supernumeraries, where they come too close andthick : for in this work it will suffice to leave them within a foot of eachother; and when they are risen about a yard in height (which may be tothe half of your palisado) cut off their tops, as you are taught, and keepthe sides clipped, that they may ascend but by degrees, and thicken atthe bottom as they climb. Thus they will present you (in half a dozenor eight years) with incomparable hedges, because they are perpetuallygreen, able to resist the winds, better than most which I know, the Hollyonly excepted, which indeed has no peer.

5-. For when I say winds, I mean their fiercest gusts, not their coldFor though it be said, Brumdque iliasa Cuprefsus, and that indeedno frost impeaches them, (for they grow even on the snowy tops of Ida,)yet our cruel eastern winds do sometimes mortally invade those whichhave been late clipped, seldom the untouched, or that were drefsed in thespring only. The March and April winds, (in the years 1663 and 1665,)accompanied with cruel frosts and cold blasts, for the space of more thantwo months, night and day,, did not, amongst near a thousand Cyprefsesgrowing in my garden, kill above three or four, which, for being verylate cut to the quick,, (that is, the latter end of October,) were rawof their wounds, took cold, and gangrened.; some few others, whichwere a little smitten towards the tops, might have escaped all theirblemishes, had my gardener capped them but with a wisp of hay orstraw, as in. my absence I commanded. As for the frost of thosewinters, (than which I believe there was never known a more crueland deadly piercing one since England had. a name,) it did not toucha Cyprefs of mine, till it joined forces with that destructive wind t