9. The elm is by reason of its aspiring and tapering growth, (unless it be topped to enlarge the branches, and make them spread low) the least offensive to corn and pasture-grounds; to both which, and the cattel, they afford a benign shade, defence, and agreeable ornament: But then as to pastures, the wand’ring roots (apt to infect the fields and grass with innumerable suckers) the leading mother-root ought to be quite separated on that part, and the suckers irradicated. The like should be done where they are placed near walks of turf or gravel.
10. It would be planted as shallow as might be; for, as we noted, deep interring of roots is amongst the catholick mistakes; and of this, the greatest to which trees are obnoxious. Let new-planted elms be kept moist by frequent refreshings upon some half-rotten fern, or litter laid about the foot of the stem; the earth a little stirred and depressed for the better reception and retention of the water.
11. Lastly, your plantation must above all things be carefully preserved from cattel and the concussions of impetuous winds, till they are out of reach of the one, and sturdy enough to encounter the other.
12. When you lop the side-boughs of an elm (which may be about January for the fire, and more frequently, if you desire to have them tall; or that you would form them into hedges, for so they may be kept plashed, and thickned to the highest twig; affording both a magnificent and august defence against the winds and sun) I say, when you trim them, be careful to indulge the tops; for they protect the body of your trees from the wet, which always invades those parts first, and will in time perish them to the very heart; so as elms beginning thus to decay, are not long prosperous. Sir Hugh Plat relates (as from an expert carpenter) that the boughs and branches of an elm should be left a foot long next the trunk when they are lopp’d; but this is to my certain observation, a very great mistake either in the relator, or author; for I have noted many elms so disbranched, that the remaining stubs grew immediately hollow, and were as so many conduits or pipes, to hold, and convey the rain to the very body and heart of the tree.
13. There was a cloyster of the right French elm in the little garden near to Her Majesty’s the Queen-Mother’s Chappel at Somerset-House, which were (I suppose) planted there, by the industry of the F. F. Capuchines, that would have directed you to the incomparable use of this noble tree for shade and delight, into whatever figure you will accustom them. I have my self procured some of them from Paris, but they were so abused in the transportation, that they all perished save one, which now flourishes with me: I have also lately graffed elms to a great improvement of their heads. Virgil tells us they will join in marriage with the oak, and they would both be tryed; and that with the more probable success, for such lignous kinds, if you graff under the earth, upon, or near the very root it self, which is likely to entertain the cyon better than when more exposed, till it be well fixt, and have made some considerable progress.
14. When you would fell, let the sap be perfectly in repose; as ’tis commonly about November or December, even to February, after the frost hath well nipp’d them: I have already alledged my reason for it; and I am told, that both oak and elm so cut, the very saplings (whereof rafters, spars, &c. are made) will continue as long as the very heart of the tree, without decay. In this work, cut your kerfe near to the ground; but have a care that it suffer not in the fall, and be ruined with its own weight: This depends upon your wood-man’s judgment in disbranching, and is a necessary caution to the felling of all other timber-trees. If any begin to doat, pick out such for the axe, and rather trust to its successor. And if cutting over-late, by floating them 2 or 3 months in the water, it prevents the worm, and proves the best of seasons.
15. Elm is a timber of most singular use; especially where it may lie continually dry, or wet, in extreams; therefore proper for water-works, mills, the ladles, and soles of the wheel, pipes, pumps, aquæ-ducts, pales, ship-planks beneath the water-line; and some that has been found buried in bogs has turned like the most polish’d and hardest ebony, only discerned by the grain: Also for wheel-wrights, handles for the single hand-saw, rails and gates made of elm (thin sawed) is not so apt to rive as oak: The knotty for naves, hubs; the straight and smooth for axle-trees, and the very roots for curiously dappled works, scarce has any superior for kerbs of coppers, featheridge, and weather-boards, (but it does not without difficulty, admit the nail without boreing) chopping-blocks, blocks for the hat-maker, trunks, and boxes to be covered with leather; coffins, for dressers and shovel-board-tables of great length, and a lustrous colour if rightly seasoned; also for the carver, by reason of the tenor of the grain, and toughness which fits it for all those curious works of frutages, foliage, shields, statues, and most of the ornaments appertaining to the orders of architecture, and for not being much subject to warping; I find that of old they used it even for hinges and hooks of doors; but then, that part of the plank which grew towards the top of the tree, was in work to be always reversed; and for that it is not so subject to rift; Vitruvius commends it both for tenons and mortaises: But besides these, and sundry other employments, it makes also the second sort of charcoal; and finally, (which I must not omit) the use of the very leaves of this tree, especially of the female, is not to be despis’d; for being suffered to dry in the sun upon the branches, and the spray strip’d off about the decrease in August (as also where the suckers and stolones are super-numerary, and hinder the thriving of their nurses) they will prove a great relief to cattel in winter, and scorching summers, when hay and fodder is dear they will eat them before oats, and thrive exceedingly well with them; remember only to lay your boughs up in some dry and sweet corner of your barn: It was for this the poet prais’d them, and the epithet was advis’d,
fruitful in leaves the elm.[74:1]
In some parts of Herefordshire they gather them in sacks for their swine, and other cattel, according to this husbandry. But I hear an ill report of them for bees, that surfeiting of the blooming seeds, they are obnoxious to the lask, at their first going abroad in spring, which endangers whole stocks, if remedies be not timely adhibited; therefore ’tis said in great elm countries they do not thrive; but the truth of which I am yet to learn. The green leaf of the elms contused, heals a green wound or cut, and boiled with the bark, consolidates fractur’d bones. All the parts of this tree are abstersive, and therefore sovereign for the consolidating wounds; and asswage the pains of the gout: But the bark decocted in common water, to almost the consistence of a syrup, adding a third part of aqua vitæ, is a most admirable remedy for the ischiadicæ or hip-pain, the place being well rubb’d and chaf’d by the fire. Other wonderful cures perform’d by the liquor, &c. of this tree, see Mr. Ray’s History of Plants, lib. XXV. cap. 1. sect. 5. and for other species of the elm, his Supplement, tom. III. ad cap. De Ulmo. tom. II. p. 1428.