I might affirm the same of our Damasco plum, quince, medlar, fig, and most ordinary pears, as well as of several other peregrine trees, fruit-bearers, and others; for even the very damask-rose it self, (as my Lord Bacon tells us, Cent. 2. exp. 659.) is little more than an hundred years old in England: Methinks this should be of wonderful incitement. It was 680 years after the foundation of Rome, e’er Italy had tasted a cherry of their own, which being then brought thither{268:1} out of Pontus (as the above-mention’d filberts were) did after 120 years, travel _ad ultimos Britannos_. 8. We had our first myrtils out of Greece, and cypress from Crete, which was yet a meer stranger in Italy, as Pliny reports, and most difficult to be raised; which made Cato to write more concerning the culture of it, than of any other tree: Notwithstanding, we have in this country of ours, no less than three sorts, which are all of them easily propagated, and prosper very well, if they are rightly ordered; and therefore I shall not omit to disclose one secret, as well to confute a popular error, as for the instruction of our gardeners. 9. The tradition is, that the cypress (being a symbol of mortality, _ferales & invisas_, they should say of the contrary) is never to be cut, for fear of killing it. This makes them to impale, and wind them about, like so many Ægyptian mummies; by which means, the inward parts of the tree being heated, for want of air and refreshment, it never arrives to any perfection, but is exceedingly troublesome, and chargeable to maintain; whereas indeed, there is not a more tonsile and governable plant in nature; for the cypress may be cut to the very roots, and yet spring afresh, as it does constantly in Candy, if not yielding suckers (as Bellonius affirms,) I rather think produced by the seeds, which the mother-trees shed at the motion of the stem in the felling: And this we find was the husbandry in the Isle of Ænaria, where they us’d to fell it for copp’ce: For the cypress being rais’d from the nursery of seeds sown in September (or rather March,) and within two years after transplanted, should at two years standing more, have the master-stem of the middle shaft cut off some hand-breadth below the summit; the sides, and smaller sprigs shorn into a conique, or pyramidal form, and so kept clipt from April to September, as oft as there is occasion; and by this regiment, they will grow furnish’d to the foot, and become the most beautiful trees in the world, without 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