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Therefore, for caution, clip not your Cyprefses late in autumn, and clothe chap.them, if young, against these winds ; for the frosts they only discolourthem, but seldom or never kill them, as by long experience I havefound. Nor altogether despair of the resurrection of a Cyprefs subvertedby the wind, for some have redrefsed themselves ; and one (as Ziphilinusmentions) rose the very next day, which happening about the reignof the Emperor Vespasian , was esteemed an happy omen. But of suchaccidents more hereafter.
6. If you affect to see your Cyprefs in Standard and grow wild, (whichmay in time come to be of a large substance, fit for the most immortalof timber, and. indeed are the least obnoxious to the rigours of our winters,provided you never clip or disbranch them,) plant of the reputed malesort; it is a tree which will prosper wonderfully where the ground is hot.and gravelly, though, as we said, he be nothing so beautiful; and it is ofthis that the Venetians make their greatest profit.
7. I have already showed how this tree is to be raised from the seed ;but there was another method amongst the ancients, who, as I told you,were wont to make great plantations of them for their timber: I havepractised it myself, and therefore describe it,
8. If you receive your seed in the roundish small nuts, which use to begathered thrice a-year, but seldom ripening with us, expose them to thesun till they gape, or near a gentle fire, or put them in warm water,as was directed for those of Cedar, by which means the seeds will beeasily shaken out; for if you have them open before, they do not yieldyou half their crop. About the beginning of April, or before, if theweather be showery, prepare an even bed, which being made of fineearth, clap down with your spade, as gardeners do for purslain seed; (ofold they rolled it with a stone or cylinder;) upon this strew your seedspretty thick, then sift over them some more mould, somewhat betterthan half an inch in height. Keep them duly watered after sun-set,unlefs the season do it for you; and after one year’s growth, for theywill be an inch high in little more than two months, you may transplantthem where you please. If i n the nursery, set them at a foot or eighteeninches distance in even lines, keeping them watered and moist till they
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