produc'd of the seeds, wash'd and
cleans'd from their mucilage, then buried and dry'd in sand a little
moist, any time in December, and so kept in some vessel in the house all
Winter, and in some cool shady place abroad all the Summer, sow them the
Spring after: Some bury them in the ground like haws; it will commonly
be the second Winter e're they peep, and then they rise with their caps
on their heads: Being three years old, you may transplant them, and form
them into standards, knobs, walks, hedges, &c. in all which works they
succeed marvellous well, and are worth our patience for their perennial
verdure and durableness: I do again name them for hedges, preferable
for beauty, and a stiff defence to any plant I have ever seen, and may
upon that account (without vanity) be said to have been the first which
brought it into fashion, as well for defence, as for a _succedaneum_ to
cypress, whether in hedges, or pyramids, conic-spires, bowls or what
other shapes, adorning the parks or larger avenues, with their lofty
tops 30 foot high, and braving all the efforts of the most rigid Winter,
which cypress cannot weather; I have said how long lasting they are, and
easily to be shap'd and clipp'd; nay cut down, revive: But those which
are much superannuated, and perhaps of many hundred years standing,
perish if so us'd.

7. He that in Winter should behold some of our highest hills in Surrey,
clad with whole woods of these two last sort of trees, for divers miles
in circuit (as in those delicious groves of them, belonging to the
Honourable, my noble friend, the late Sir Adam Brown of
Bech-worth-Castle, from Box-hill) might without the least violence to
his imagination, easily fancy himself transported into some new or
enchanted country; for, if any spot of England,

........'Tis here
Eternal Spring, and Summer all the year.{300:1}

Of which I have already spoken in the former section.

8. But, above all the natural greens which inrich our home-born store,
there is none certainly to be compar'd to the _agrifolium_, (or
_acuifolium_ rather) our holly so spontaneously growing here in this
part of Surrey, that the large vale near my own dwelling, was anciently
call'd Holmes-Dale; famous for the flight of the Danes: The inhabitants
of great antiquity (in their manners, habits, speech) have a proverb,
Holmes-Dale never won; he never shall. It had once a fort, call'd
Homes-Dale Castle: I know not whether it mig