this chapter endeavoured to set down and prescribe
the best and most approved remedies hitherto found out, as well natural
as artificial.

And first, weeds are to be diligently pull'd up by hand after rain,
whiles your seedlings are very young, and till they come to be able to
kill them with shade, and over-dripping: And then are you for the
obstinate, to use the haw, fork, and spade, to extirpate dog-grass,
bear-bind, &c.

And here mentioning shade and dripping, though I cannot properly speak
of them as infirmities of trees, they are certainly the causes of their
unthriving till remov'd; such as that of the oak and mast-holme,
wall-nut, pine and fir, &c. the thickness of the leaves intercepting the
sun and rain; whilst that of other trees good, as the elm, and several
other.

2. Suckers shall be duly eradicated, and with a sharp spade dexterously
separated from the mother-roots, and transplanted in convenient places
for propagation, as the season requires.

Here note, that fruit graffed upon suckers, are more dispos'd to
produce suckers, than such as are propagated upon good stocks.

3. Fern, is best destroy'd by striking off the tops, as Tarquin did the
heads of the poppies: This done with a good wand, or cudgel, at the
decrease in the Spring, and now and then in Summer, kills it (as also it
does nettles) in a year or two, (but most infallibly, by being eaten
down at its spring, by Scotch-sheep) beyond the vulgar way of mowing, or
burning, which rather encreases, than diminishes it.

4. Over-much wet is to be drain'd by trenches, where it infests the
roots of such kinds as require drier ground: But if a drip do fret into
the body of a tree by the head (which will certainly decay it) cutting
first the place smooth, stop and cover it with loam and hay, or a
cerecloth, till a new bark succeed. But not only the wet, which is to be
diverted by trenching the ground, is exitial to many trees, but their
repletion of too abundant nourishment; and therefore sometimes there may
be as much occasion to use the lancet, as phlebotomy and venaesection to
animals; especially if the hypothesis hold, of the superfluous
moisture's descent into the roots, to be re-concocted; but where, in
case it be more copious than{316:1} can be there elaborated, it turns to
corruption, and sends up a tainted juice, which perverts the whole habit
of the tree: In this exigence therefore, it were perhaps more
counsellable to draw it out by a deep