in sword and buckler-days. Dioscorides writes, that the bark
chopt small, and sow'd in rills, well and richly manur'd and watered,
will produce a plentiful crop of mushrooms; or warm water, in which yest
is dissolv'd, cast upon a new-cut stump: It is to be noted, that those
_fungi_, which spring from the putrid stumps of this tree are not
venenous (as of all, or most other trees they are) being gathered after
the first autumnal rains. There is a poplar of a paler green, and is the
properest for watry ground: 'Twill grow of trunchions from two, or eight
foot long, and bringing a good lop in a short time, is by some preferr'd
to willows.

For the setting of these, Mr. Cook advises the boring of the ground with
a sort of auger, to prevent the stripping of the bark from the stake in
planting: A foot and half deep, or more if great, (for some may be 8 or
9 foot) for pollards, cut sloping, and free of cracks at either end: Two
or three inches diameter, is a competent bigness, and the earth should
be ramm'd close to them.

Another expedient is, by making drains in very moist ground, two spade
deep, and three foot wide, casting up the earth between the drains,
sowing it the first year with oats to mellow the ground, the next Winter
setting it for copp'ce, with these, any, or all the watry sorts of
trees; thus, in four or five years, you will have a handsome fell, and
so successively: It is in the former author, where the charge is exactly
calculated, to whom I refer the reader. I am inform'd, that in Cheshire
there grow many stately and streight black poplars, which they call
_peplurus_, that yield boards and planks of an inch and half thickness;
so fit for floaring of rooms, by some preferr'd to oak, for the
whiteness and lasting, where they lie dry.

3. They have a poplar in Virginia of a very peculiar shap'd leaf, as if
the point of it were cut off, which grows very well with the curious
amongst us to a considerable stature. I conceive it was first brought
over by John Tradescant, under the name of the tulip-tree, (from the
likeness of its flower) but is not, that I find, taken much notice of in
any of our herbals: I wish we had more of them; but they are difficult
to elevate at first.

4. The aspen only (which is that kind of _libyca_ or white poplar,
bearing a smaller, and more tremulous leaf, (by the French call'd _la
tremble_ or quaker) thrusts down a more searching foot, and in this
likewise differs, that he takes