on
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 proedations 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