7. For, the southern parts being more dilated, and the pores expos’d (as evidently appears in their horizontal sections) by the constant excentricity of the hyperbolical circles of all trees, (save just under Æquator, where the circles concentre, as we find in those hard woods which grow there) ours, being now on the sudden, and at such a season converted to the north, does starve and destroy more trees (how careful soever men have been in ordering the roots, and preparing the ground,) than any other accident whatsoever (neglect of staking, and defending from cattle excepted); the importance whereof caused the best of poets, and most experienc’d in this Argument, giving advice concerning this article, to add.
The card’nal points upon the bark they sign,
And as before it stood, in the same line
Place to warm south, or the obverted pole;
Such force has custom, in each tender soul.[42:1]
Which monition, though Pliny, and some others think good to neglect, or esteem indifferent, I can confirm from frequent losses of my own, and by particular tryals; having sometimes transplanted great trees at mid-summer with success (the earth adhering to the roots) and miscarried in others, where this circumstance only was omitted.
To observe therefore the coast, and side of the stock (especially of fruit-trees) is not such a trifle as by some pretended: For if the air be as much the mother or nurse, as water and earth, (as more than probable it is) such blossoming plants as court the motion of the meridian sun, do as ’t were evidently point out the advantage they receive by their position, by the clearness, politure, and comparative splendor of the southside: And the frequent mossiness of trees on the opposite side, does sufficiently note the unkindness of that aspect; most evident in the bark of oaks white and smooth; the trees growing more kindly on the south side of an hill, than those which are expos’d to the north, with an hard, dark, rougher and more mossie integument, as I can now demonstrate in a prodigious coat of it, investing some pyracanths which I have removed to a northern dripping shade. I have seen (writes a worthy friend to me on this occasion) whole hedge-rows of apples and pears that quite perished after that shelter was removed: The good husbands expected the contrary, and that the fruit should improve, as freed from the prœdations of the hedge; but use and custom made that shelter necessary; and therefore (saith he) a stock for a time is the weaker, taken out of a thicket, if it be not well protected from all sudden and fierce invasions, either of crude air or winds. Nor let any be deterr’d, if being to remove any trees, he shall esteem it too consumptive of time; for with a brush dipped in any white colour, or oaker, a thousand may be marked as they stand, in a moment; and that once done, the difficulty is over. I have been the larger upon these two remarks, because I find them so material, and yet so much neglected.
8. There are other rules concerning the situation of trees; the former author commending the north-east-wind both for the flourishing of the tree, and advantage of the timber; but to my observation in our climates, where those sharp winds do rather flanker than blow fully opposite upon our plantations, they thrive best; and there are as well other circumstances to be considered, as they respect rivers and marshes obnoxious to unwholsom and poysonous fogs, hills and seas, which expose them to the weather; and those silvifragi venti, our cruel and tedious western-winds; all which I leave to observation, because these accidents do so universally govern, that it is not easie to determine farther than that the timber is commonly better qualified which hath endur’d the colder aspects without these prejudices. And hence it is that Seneca observes, wood most expos’d to the winds to be the most strong and solid, and that therefore Chiron made Achilles’s spear of a mountain-tree; and of those the best, which grow thin, not much shelter’d from the north. Again, Theophrastus seems to have special regard to places; exemplifying in many of Greece, which exceeded others for good timber, as doubtless do our oaks in the Forest of Dean all others of England: And much certainly there may reasonably be attributed to these advantages for the growth of timber, and of almost all other trees, as we daily see by their general improsperity, where the ground is 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 its proper soil; though next to this, and (haply) before it, I prefer the good air. But thus have they such vast junipers in Spain; and the ash in some parts of the Levant (as of old near Troy) so excellent, as it was after mistaken for cedar, so great was the difference; as now the Cantabrian, or Spanish exceeds any we have elsewhere in Europe. And we shall sometimes in our own country see woods within a little of each other, and to all appearance, growing on the same soil, where oaks of twenty years growth, or forty, will in the same bulk, contain their double in heart and timber; and that in one, the heart will not be so big as a man’s arm, when the trunk exceeds a man’s body: This ought therefore to be weighed in the first plantation of copses, and a good eye may discern it in the first shoot; the difference proceeding doubtless from the variety of the seed, and therefore great care should be had of its goodness, and that it be gather’d from the best sort of trees, as was formerly hinted, Chap. 1.
9. Veterem arborem transplantare was said of a difficult enterprize; yet before we take leave of this paragraph, concerning the transplanting of great trees, and to shew what is possible to be effected in this kind, with cost and industry; Count Maurice (the late Governor of Brasil for the Hollanders) planted a grove near his delicious paradise of Friburgh, containing six hundred coco-trees of eighty years growth, and fifty foot high to the nearest bough: These he wafted upon floats and engines, four long miles; and planted them so luckily, that they bare abundantly the very first year; as Gasper Barlœus hath related in his Elegant Description of that Prince’s Expedition. Nor hath this only succeeded in the Indies alone; Monsieur de Fiat (one of the Mareschals of France) hath with huge oaks done the like at Fiat. Shall I yet bring you nearer home? A great person in Devon, planted oaks as big as twelve oxen could draw, to supply some defect in an avenue to one of his houses; as the Right Honourable the Lord Fitz-Harding, late Treasurer of His Majesty’s Household, assur’d me; who had himself likewise practis’d the removing of great oaks by a particular address extreamly ingenious, and worthy the communication.
10. Chuse a tree as big as your thigh, remove the earth from about him; cut through all the collateral roots, till with a competent strength you can enforce him down upon one side, so as to come with your ax at the top-root; cut that off, redress your tree, and so let it stand cover’d about with the mould you loosen’d from it, till the next year, or longer if you think good; then take it up at a fit season; it will likely have drawn new tender roots apt to take, and sufficient for the tree, wheresoever you shall transplant him. Some are for laying bare the whole roots, and then dividing it into 4 parts, in form of a cross, to cut away the interjacent rootlings, leaving only the cross and master-roots, that were spared to support the tree; and then covering the pit with fresh mould (as above) after a year or two, when it has put forth, and furnish’d the interstices you left between the cross-roots, with plenty of new fibers and tender shoots, you may safely remove the tree itself, so soon as you have loosened and reduc’d the 4 decusseted roots, and shortned the top-roots: And this operation is done without stooping or bending the tree at all: And if in removing it with as much of the clod about the new roots, as possible, it would be much the better.
Pliny notes it as a common thing, to re-establish huge trees which have been blown down, part of their roots torn up, and the body prostrate; and, in particular, of a firr, that when it was to be transplanted, had a top-root which went no less than eight cubits perpendicular; and to these I could superadd (by woful experience) where some oaks, and other old trees of mine, tore up with their fall and ruin, portions of earth (in which their former spreading roots were ingag’d) little less in bulk and height than some ordinary cottages and houses, built on the common: Such havock, was the effect of the late prodigious hurricane. But to proceed. To facilitate the removal of such monstrous trees, for the adornment of some particular place, or the rarity of the plant, there is this farther expedient: A little before the hardest frosts surprise you, make a square trench about your tree, at such distance from the stem as you judge sufficient for the root; dig this of competent depth, so as almost quite to undermine it; by placing blocks and quarters of wood, to sustain the earth; this done, cast in as much water as may fill the trench, or at least sufficiently wet it, unless the ground were very moist before. Thus let it stand, till some very hard frost do bind it firmly to the roots, and then convey it to the pit prepar’d for its new station, which you may preserve from freezing, by laying store of warm litter in it, and so close the mould the better to the stragling fibers, placing what you take out about your new guest, to preserve it in temper: But in case the mould about it be so ponderous as not to be remov’d by an ordinary force; you may then raise it with a crane or pully, hanging between a triangle (or like machine) which is made of three strong and tall limbs united at the top, where a pully is fastned, as the cables are to be under the quarters which bear the earth about the roots: For by this means you may weigh up, and place the whole weighty clod upon a trundle, sledge, or other carriage, to be convey’d and replanted where you please, being let down perpendicularly into the place by the help of the foresaid engine. And by this address you may transplant trees of a wonderful stature, without the least disorder; and many times without topping, or diminution of the head, which is of great importance, where this is practis’d to supply a defect, or remove a curiosity.
11. Some advise, that in planting of oaks, &c. four or five be suffer’d to stand very near to one another, and then to leave the most prosperous, when they find the rest to disturb his growth; but I conceive it were better to plant them at such distances, as they may least incommode one another: For timber-trees, I would have none nearer than forty foot where they stand closest; especially of the spreading kind.
12. Lastly, trees of ordinary stature transplanted (being first well water’d) must be sufficiently staked, and bush’d about with thorns, or with something better, to protect them from the concussions of the winds, and from the casual rubbing, and poysonous brutting of cattle and sheep, the oyliness of whose wooll is also very noxious to them; till being well grown and fixed (which by seven years will be to some competent degree) they shall be able to withstand all accidental invasions, but the axe; for I am now come to their pruning and cutting, in which work the seasons are of main importance.