st bark; for that is ever an
indication of youth, as well as the paucity of their circles, which in
disbranching and cutting the head off, at five or six foot height (a
thing, by the way, which the French usually spare when they transplant
this tree) may (before you stir their roots) serve for the more certain
guide; and then plant them immediately, with as much earth as will
adhere to them, in the place destin'd for their station; abating only
the{41:1} tap-root, which is that down-right, and stubby part of the
roots (which all trees rais'd of seeds do universally produce) and
quickning some of the rest with a sharp knife (but sparing the fibrous,
which are the main suckers and mouths of all trees) spread them in the
foss or pit which hath been prepar'd to receive them. I say, in the
foss, unless you will rather trench the whole field, which is
incomparably the best; and infinitely to be preferr'd before narrow pits
and holes (as the manner is) in case you plant any number considerable,
the earth being hereby made loose, easier and penetrable for the roots,
about which you are to cast that mould, which (in opening of the trench)
you took from the surface, and purposely laid apart; because it is
sweet, mellow, and better impregnated: But in this work, be circumspect
never to inter your stem deeper than you found it standing; for profound
burying very frequently destroys a tree, though an error seldom
observed: If therefore the roots be sufficiently covered to keep the
body steady and erect, it is enough; and the not minding of this
trifling circumstance, does very much deceive our ordinary wood-men, as
well as gardiners; for most roots covet the air (though that of the
_Quercus urbano_ least of any); for like the _Esculus_

How much to heaven her towring head ascends,
So much towards hell her piercing root extends.{41:2}

And the perfection of that, does almost as much concern the prosperity
of a tree, as of man himself, since _homo_ is but _arbor inversa_; which
prompts me to this curious, but important advertisement, that the
position be likewise sedulously observed.

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
AEquator, where the circles concentre, as we find in those hard woods
which grow there) ours, being now on the sudden, and at such a seas