unless it be, that in some exceeding sharp
seasons, a little dry straw has been thrown upon it; and where they are
smitten, being cut down near the ground, they put forth and recover
again; which many times they do not in pots and cases, where the roots
are very obnoxious to perish with mouldiness. The shelter of a few mats,
and straw, secur'd very great trees (both leaf and colour in perfection)
this last Winter also, which were planted abroad; whilst those that were
carried into the conserve, were most of them lost. Myrtils (which are of
six or eight sorts) may be rais'd of seeds; as also may several
varieties of oranges and lemmons, and made (after some years attendance)
to produce fruit in the cold Rhetia and Helvetick valleys; but with
great caution, and after all, seldom prove worth the pains, being so
abundantly multiplied of suckers, slips and layers: The double-flower
(which is the most beautiful) was first discovered by the incomparable
Fabr. Piereshy, which a mule had cropt from a wild shrub. Note, that you
cannot give those plants too much compost or refreshing, nor clip them
too often, even to the stem; which will grow tall, and prosper into any
shape; so as arbours have been made of single trees of the hardy kind,
protected in the Winter with sheads of straw and reeds. Both leaves and
berries refrigerate, and are very astringent and drying, and therefore
seldom us'd within, except in fluxes: With wine and honey it heals the
noisome _polypus_, and the powder corrects the rankness of the arm-pits,
and _gousset_ (as the French term it) to which divers of the female sex
are subject: The berries mitigate the inflammations of the eyes,
consolidate broken-bones; and a decoction of the juice, leaves, and
berries, dyes the hair black, & _enecant vitiligenes_, as Dioscorides
says, l. 1. c. 128. And there is an excellent sweet water extracted from
the distill'd leaves and flowers: To which the naturalist adds, that
they us'd the berries instead of pepper, to stuff and farce with them.
Hence the _mortadella a mortatula_, still so call'd by the Italians,
perhaps the +myrtides+ of Athenaeus, _deip._ l. 2. c. 12. The _vinum
myrtites_ so celebrated by the{290:1} ancients, and so the oyl; And in
some places the leaves for tanning of leather: and trees have grown to
such substance, as of the very wood curious cups and boxes have been
turn'd.

The variety of this rare shrub, now furnishing the gardens and portico's
(as long