tween the cross-roots, with plenty
of new fibers and tender shoots, you may safely remove the tree itself,
so soon as you have loosened and reduc'd the 4 decusseted roots, and
shortned the top-roots: And this operation is done without stooping or
bending the tree at all: And if in removing it with as much of the clod
about the new roots, as possible, it would be much the better.

Pliny notes it as a common thing, to re-establish huge trees which have
been blown down, part of their roots torn up, and the body prostrate;
and, in particular, of a firr, that when it was to be transplanted, had
a top-root which went no less than eight cubits perpendicular; and to
these I could superadd (by woful experience) where some oaks, and other
old trees of mine, tore up with their fall and ruin, portions of earth
(in which their former spreading roots were ingag'd) little less in bulk
and height than some ordinary cottages and houses, built on the common:
Such havock, was the effect of the late prodigious hurricane. But to
proceed. To facilitate the removal of such monstrous trees, for the
adornment of some particular place, or the rarity of the plant, there is
this farther expedient: A little before the hardest frosts surprise you,
make a square trench about your tree, at such distance from the stem as
you judge sufficient for the root; dig this of competent depth, so as
almost quite to undermine it; by placing blocks and quarters of wood, to
sustain the earth; this done, cast in as much water as may fill the
trench, or at least sufficiently wet it, unless the ground were very
moist before. Thus let it stand, till some very hard frost do bind it
firmly to the roots, and then convey it to the pit prepar'd for its new
station, which you may preserve from freezing, by laying store of warm
litter in it, and so close the mould the better to the stragling fibers,
placing what you take out about your new guest, to preserve it in
temper: But in case the mould about it be so ponderous as not to be
remov'd by an ordinary force; you may then raise it with a crane or
pully, hanging between a triangle (or like machine) which is made of
three strong and tall limbs united at the top, where a pully is fastned,
as the cables are to be under the quarters which bear the earth about
the roots: For by this means you may weigh up, and place the whole
weighty clod upon a trundle, sledge, or other carriage, to be convey'd
and replanted where you please, bein