or alter your grafts, and
when your wedge is forth you shall then looke vpon your grafts, and if
you perceiue that the stocke doe pinch or squize them, which you may
discerne both by the straitnesse and bending of the outmost barke, you
shall then make a little wedge of some greene sappy woode, and driuing
it into the cleft, ease your grafts, cutting that wedge close to the
stocke. When you haue thus made both your grafts perfect, you shall then
take the barke of either Apple-tree, Crab-tree or Willow-tree, and with
that barke couer the head of the stocke so close that no wet or other
annoyance may get betwixt it and the stocke, then you shall take a
conuenient quantitie of clay, which indeede would be of a binding
mingled earth, and tempering it well, either with mosse or hay, lay it
vpon the barke, and daube all the head of the stocke, euen as low as the
bottome of the grafts, more then an inch thicke, so firme, close, and
smooth as may be, which done, couer all that clay ouer with soft mosse,
and that mosse with some ragges of wollen cloath, which being gently
bound about with the inward barkes of Willow, or Osyar, let the graft
rest to the pleasure of the highest: and this is called grafting in the
cleft.

{SN: Notes.}
Now there be certaine obseruations or caueats to be respected in
grafting, which I may not neglect: as first, in trimming and preparing
your grafts for the stocke: if the grafts be either of Cherry, or
Plumbe, you shall not cut them so thinne as the grafts of Apples,
Quinces, or Medlars, because they haue a much larger and rounder pith,
which by no meanes must be toucht but fortefied and preserued, onely to
the neather end you may cut them as thinne as is possible, the pith
onely preserued.

Secondly, you shall into your greatest stockes put your greatest grafts,
and into your least, the least, that there may be an equall strength and
conformitie in their coniunction.

Thirdly, if at any time you be inforced to graft vpon an olde tree, that
is great and large, then you shall not graft into the body of that tree,
because it is impossible to keepe it from putrifaction and rotting
before the grafts can couer the head, but you shall chuse out some of
the principall armes or branches, which are much more slender, and graft
them, as is before shewed, omitting not dayly to cut away all cyons,
armes, branches, or superfluous sprigs which shall grow vnder those
branches which you haue newly grafted: but if