183
fruit-bearers, and others, to abate that $>w Mfixytot, which Spends all the chap.juice in the leaves, to the prejudice of the rest of the parts. ~ 0 ~v'
But after all this, let us hear what the learned and experienced SquireBrotherton has observed upon this article of pruning, and particularly ofthe taking off the top: That those trees which were so used, some yearsbefore the severe frost of 1684 , died ; those not so pruned, escaped : Andof other trees (having but a small head left) the rest of the boughs cleared,the tops flourished, and the loose branches shread perished, and theunpruned escaped : Moreover, when the like pruning was tried on treestwenty feet high, the difference of the increase was visible the followingsummer; but within seven or eight years time the difference was ex-ceedingly great, and even prodigious, both in hark and branch, beyondthose trees that had been pruned.
This, and the like, belonging to the care of the Wood-ward, will mindhim of his continual duty; which is to walk about and survey his youngplantations daily; and to see that all gaps be immediately stopped ;trespafsing cattle impounded ; and (where they are infested) the deerchased out, &c. It is most certain that trees, preserved and governed bythis discipline, and according to the rules mentioned, would increase thebeauty of forests, and value of timber, more in ten or twelve years, thanall other imaginable plantations (accompanied with our usual neglect) cando in forty or fifty.
To conclude : In the time of this work, our ingenious Arboratorshould frequently incorporate, mingle, and unite the arms and branchesof some young and flexible trees, which grow in consort, and near to oneanother, by entering them into their mutual barks with a convenientincision: this, especially about fields and hedge-rows, for fence andornament. Dr. Plot mentions some that do naturally, or rather indeedaccidentally, mingle thus > nay, and so embrace and coalesce, as if theyifsued out of the bowels of one another: Such are two Beeches in theway from Oxford to Reading at Cain-End; the bodies of which treesspringing from different roots, after they have ascended parallel to thetop, strangely unite together a great height from the ground, a transversepiece of timber entering at each end of the bodies of the trees, andgrowing jointly with them : The same is seen in Sycamores at New
A a 2