umberland: The seed grows ripe
with us in August; and the honey-breathing blossoms afford an early and
marvellous relief to the bees.

8. The _celastrus_ (of the same class) _ligustrum_ and privits, so
flexible and accommodate for topiary-works, and so well known, I shall
need say no more of.

9. The _philyrea_, (of which there are five or six sorts, and some
variegated) are sufficiently hardy, (especially the _serratifole_) which
makes me wonder to find the _angustifolia_ planted in cases, and so
charily set into the stoves, amongst the oranges and lemmons; when by
long experience, I have found it equalling our holley, in suffering the
extreamest rigours of our cruel frosts and winds, which is doubtless (of
all our English trees) the most insensible and stout.

10. They are (both _alaternus_, and this) raised of the seeds, (though
those of the _philyrea_ will be long under ground) and being
transplanted for _espalier_ hedges, or standards, are to be governed by
the shears, as oft as there is occasion: The _alaternus_ will be up in a
month or two after it is sown: I was wont to wash them out of the berry,
and drying them a little in a cloath, commit them to the nursery-bed.
Plant it out at two years growth, and clip it after rain in the Spring,
before it grows sticky, and whilst the shoots are tender; thus will it
form an hedge (though planted but in single rows, and at two foot
distance) of a yard in thickness, twenty foot high (if you desire it)
and furnish'd to the bottom: but for an hedge of this altitude, it would
require the friendship of some wall, or a frame of lusty poles, to
secure against the winds one of the most delicious objects in nature:
But if we could have store of the _philyrea folio leviter serrato_ (of
which I have rais'd some very fine plants from the seeds) we might fear
no weather, and the verdure is incomparable, and all of them tonsile,
fit for cradle-work and _umbracula frondium_: a decoction of the
_angustifolia_ soveraign for sore mouths.

11. The myrtil. The vulgar Italian wild myrtil (though not indeed the
most fragrant) grows high, and supports all weathers and climates; they
thrive abroad in Bretany, in places cold and very sharp in Winter; and
are observ'd no where to prosper so well, as by the sea-coasts, the air
of which is more propitious to them (as well as to oranges and lemmons,
&c.) than the inland air. I know of one near eighty years old, which has
been continually expos'd;