ng on the Northern and
shady side of the Appennines, were nothing so good, which he imputes to
the want of due digestion. They thrive (as we said) in the most sterile
places, yet will grow in better, but not in over-rich, and pinguid. The
worst land in Wales bears (as I am told) large pine; and the fir
according to his aspiring nature, loves also the mountain more than the
valley; but +en tois paliskiois holos ou phuetai+, _it cannot endure the
shade_, as Theophrastus observes, _de Pl._ l. 4. c. 1. But this is not
rigidly true; for they will grow in consort, till they even shade and
darken one another, and will also descend from the hills, and succeed
very well, being desirous of plentiful waterings, till they arrive to
some competent stature; and therefore they do not prosper so well in an
over sandy and hungry soil, or gravel, as in the very entrails of the
rocks, which afford more drink to the roots, that penetrate into their
meanders, and winding recesses. But though they require this refreshing
at first, yet do they perfectly abhor all stercoration; nor will they
much endure to have the earth open'd about their roots for ablaqueation,
or be disturb'd: This is also to be understood of cypress. A fir, for
the first half dozen years, seems to stand, or at least make no
considerable advance, but it is when throughly rooted, that it comes
away miraculously. That honourable and learned knight Sir Norton
Knatchbull, (whose delicious plantation of pines and firs I beheld with
great satisfaction) having assur'd me, that a fir-tree of his raising,
did shoot no less than sixty foot in height, in little more than twenty
years; and what are extant at Sir Peter Wentworth's of Lillingston
Lovel; Cornbury in Oxfordshire, and other places; but especially those
trees growing now in Harefield Park in the county of Middlesex
(belonging to Mr. Serjeant Nudigate) where there are two Spanish or
silver firs, that at 2 years growth from the seed, being planted there
_an._ 1603, are now become goodly masts: The biggest of them from the
ground to the upper bough, is 81 feet, though forked on the top, which
has not a little impeded its growth: The girt, or circumference below,
is thirteen foot, and the length (so far as is timber, that is, to six
inches square) 73 foot, in the middle 17 inches square, amounting by
calculation to 146 foot of good timber: The other tree is indeed not
altogether so large, by reason of its standing near the house w