3. The best time to transplant, were in the beginning of April; they would thrive mainly in a stiff, hungry clay, or rather loam; but by no means in over-light, or rich soil: Fill the holes therefore with such barren earth, if your ground be improper of it self; and if the clay be too stiff, and untractable, with a little sand, removing with as much earth about the roots as is possible, though the fir will better endure a naked transplantation, than the pine: If you be necessitated to plant towards the latter end of Summer, lay a pretty deal of horse-litter upon the surface of the ground, to keep off the heat, and in Winter the cold; but let no dung touch either stem or root: You may likewise sow in such earth about February, they will make a shoot the very first year of an inch; next an handful, the third year three foot, and thence forward, above a yard annually. A Northern gentleman (who has oblig’d me with this process upon his great experience) assures me, that fir, and this _feralis arbor_, (as Virgil calls the pine) are abundantly planted in Northumberland, which are in few years grown to the magnitude of ship-masts; and from all has been said, deduces these encouragements. 1. The facility of their propagation. 2. The nature of their growth, which is to affect places where nothing else will thrive. 3. Their uniformity and beauty. 4. Their perpetual verdure. 5. Their sweetness. 6. Their fruitfulness; affording seed, gum, fuel, and timber of all other woods the most useful, and easy to work, &c. All which highly recommend it as an excellent improvement of husbandry, fit to be enjoyn’d by some solemn edict, to the inhabitants of this our island, that we may have masts, and those other materials of our own growth: In planting the silver _abies_, set not the roots too deep, it affects the surface more than the rest.