t binding
or stake; still remembring to abate the middle stem, and to bring up the
collateral branches in its stead, to what altitude you please; but when
I speak of short'ning the middle shoot, I do not intend the dwarfing of
it, and therefore it must be done discreetly, so as it may not
over-hastily advance, till the foot thereof be perfectly furnished: But
there is likewise another, no less commendable expedient, to dress this
tree with all the former advantages; if sparing the shaft altogether,
you diligently cut away all the forked branches, reserving only such as
radiate directly from the body, which being shorn, and clipt in due
season, will render the tree very beautiful; and though more subject to
obey the shaking winds, yet the natural spring of it, does immediately
redress it, without the least discomposure; and this is a secret worth
the learning of gardeners, who subject themselves to the trouble of
stakes and binding, which is very inconvenient. Thus likewise may you
form them into hedges, topiary works, limits and boundary, _metas
imitata cupressus_; or by sowing the seeds in a shallow furrow, and
plucking up the supernumeraries, where they come too close and thick:
For in this work, it will suffice to leave them within a foot of each
other; and when they are risen about a yard in height, (which may be to
the half of your palisado) cut off their tops, as you are taught, and
keep the sides clipp'd, that they ascend but by degrees, and thicken at
the bottom as they climb. Thus, they will present you (in half a dozen
or eight years) with incomparable hedges; because they are perpetually
green, able to resist the winds better than most which I know, the holly
only excepted, which indeed has no peer.

10. For, when I say winds, I mean their fiercest gusts, not their cold:
For though it be said, _brumaque illaesa cupressus_, and that indeed no
frost impeaches them (for they grow even on the snowy tops of Ida,) yet
our cruel eastern winds do sometimes mortally invade them which have
been late clipp'd, seldom the untouch'd or that were dressed in the
Spring only: The effects of March and April winds (in the Year 1663, and
1665) accompanied with cruel frosts, and cold blasts, for the space of
more than two months, night and day, did not amongst near a thousand
cypresses (growing in my garden) kill above three or four, which for
being very late cut to the quick (that is, the latter end of October)
were raw of their