A hedge of holly, thieves that would invade, Repulses like a growing palizade; Whose numerous leaves such orient greens invest, As in deep Winter do the Spring arrest.{301:1} Which makes me wonder why it should be reckon’d among the unfortunate trees, by Macrobius, _Sat._ lib. III. cap. 20. others among the lucky; for so it seems they us’d to send branches of it, as well as of oak (the most fortunate, according to the Gentile theology) with their _strenae_ (new-year’s gifts) begun (as Symachus tells us) by K. Tatius, almost as old as Rome her self. But to say no more of these superstitious fopperies, which are many other about this tree, we still dress up both our churches and houses, on Christmas and other festival days, with this cheerful green and rutilant berries. 9. Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind, than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred foot in length, nine foot high, and five in diameter; which I can shew in my now ruin’d gardens at Say’s-Court, (thanks to the Czar of Moscovy) at any time of the year, glitt’ring with its arm’d and varnish’d leaves? The taller standards at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral: It mocks at the rudest assaults of the weather, beasts, or hedge-breakers, _Et illum nemo impunè lacessit._ It is with us of two eminent kinds, the prickly, and smoother leav’d; or as some term it, the free-holly, not unwelcome when tender, to sheep and other cattle: There is also of the white-berried, and a golden and silver, variegated in six or seven differences; which proceeds from no difference in the species, but accidentally, and _naturae lusu_, as most such variegations do; since we are taught how to effect it artificially, namely, by sowing the seeds, and planting in gravelly soil, mixed with store of chalk, and pressing it hard down; it being certain, that they return to their native colour when sown in richer mould, and that all the fibers of the roots recover their natural food.