ite; whilst the young
imps and seedlings are yet tender and flexible, and require not only
different nourishment and protection from too much cold, heat, and other
injuries; but due and skilful management, in dressing, redressing and
pruning, as they grow capable of being brought into shape, and of
hopeful expectation, when time has rendered them fit for the use and
service requir'd, according to their kinds. He therefore that undertakes
the nursery, should be knowing not only in the choice of the seeds,
where, when, and how to sow them; but to know what time of gestation
they require in the womb of their mother-earth, before parturition; that
so he may not be surprized with her delivering some of them sooner, or
later than he expects them; for some will lye two, nay, three year, e'er
they peep; most others one, and some a quarter, or a month or two;
whilst the tardy and less forward so tire the hopes of the husbandman,
that he many times digs up the platts and beds in which they were sown,
despairing of a crop, sometimes ready to spring and come up, as I have
found by experience to my loss: Those of hard shell and integument will
lie longer buried than others; for so the _libanus_ cedar, and most of
the coniferous firs, pines, &c. shed their seeds late, and sometimes
remain two winters and as many summers, to open their scales glued so
fast together, without some external application of fire or warm water,
which is yet not so natural as when they open of themselves. The same
may be observed of some minuter seeds, even among the olitories; as that
of parsley, which will hardly spring in less than a year; so beet-seed,
part in the second and third, &c. which upon inspecting the skins and
membranes involving them, would be hard to give a reason for. To
accelerate this, they use imbibitions of piercing spirits, salts,
emollients, &c. not only to the seeds, but to the soil, which we seldom
find much signify, but either to produce abortion or monsters; and being
forc'd to hasty birth, become nothing so hardy, healthful and lasting,
as the conception and birth they receive from nature. These observations
premis'd in general, after I have recommended to our industrious
planters the appendix or table of the several sorts of soil and places
that are proper, or at least may seem so; or that are unfit for certain
kinds of trees, (as well foresters and others, annexed to this work) I
should proceed to particulars, and boldly advance