the sap begins to creep up into the boughs, and the buds
ready to break out; cut the boughs into lengths of four foot slanting,
leaving the knot where the bud seems to put forth in the middle: Inter
these short pieces in trenches of three or four inches deep, and in good
mould well trodden, and they will infallibly produce you a crop; for
even the smallest suckers of elms will grow, being set when the sap is
newly stirring in them. There is yet a fourth way no less expeditious,
and frequently confirmed with excellent success: Bare some of the
master-roots of a vigorous tree within a foot of the trunk, or there
abouts, and with your axe make several chops, putting a small stone into
every cleft, to hinder their closure, and give access to the wet; then
cover them with three or four inch-thick of earth; and thus they will
send forth suckers in abundance, (I assure you one single elm thus well
ordered, is a fair nursery) which after two or three years, you may
separate and plant in the _Ulmarium_, or place designed for them; and
which if it be in plumps (as they call them) within ten or twelve foot
of each other, or in hedge-rows, it will be the better: For the elm is a
tree of consort, sociable, and so affecting to grow in company, that the
very best which I have ever seen, do almost touch one another: This also
protects them from the winds, and causes them to shoot of an
extraordinary height; so as in little more than forty years, they even
arrive to a load of timber; provided they be sedulously and carefully
cultivated, and the soil propitious. For an elm does not thrive so well
in the forest, as where it may enjoy scope for the roots to dilate and
spread at the sides, as in hedge-rows and avenues, where they have the
air likewise free: Note, that they spring abundantly by layers also.

5. There is besides these sorts we have named, one of a more scabrous
harsh leaf, but very large, which becomes an huge tree, (frequent in the
northern counties) and is distinguished by the name of the witch-hazle
in our Statute Books, as serving formerly to make long bowes of; but the
timber is not so good as the first more vulgar; but the bark at time of
year, will serve to make a course bast-rope with.

6. Of all the trees which grow in our woods, there is none which does
better suffer the transplantation than the elm; for you may remove a
tree of twenty years growth with undoubted success: It is an experiment
I have made in a tree al