twenty or thirty yards) from such trees as stand in hedge-rows, and in such order as you desire your elms should grow; where these gutters are, many young elms will spring from the small roots of the adjoining trees.

Divide (after one year) the shoots from their mother-roots (which you may dextrously do with a sharp spade) and these transplanted, will prove good trees without any damage to their progenitors.

Or do thus, lop a young elm, the lop being about three years growth, do it in the latter end of March, when the sap begins to creep up into the boughs, and the buds ready to break out; cut the boughs into lengths of four foot slanting, leaving the knot where the bud seems to put forth in the middle: Inter these short pieces in trenches of three or four inches deep, and in good mould well trodden, and they will infallibly produce you a crop; for even the smallest suckers of elms will grow, being set when the sap is newly stirring in them.

There is yet a fourth way no less expeditious, and frequently confirmed with excellent success: Bare some of the master-roots of a vigorous tree within a foot of the trunk, or there abouts, and with your axe make several chops, putting a small stone into every cleft, to hinder their closure, and give access to the wet; then cover them with three or four inch-thick of earth; and thus they will send forth suckers in abundance, (I assure you one single elm thus well ordered, is a fair nursery) which after two or three years, you may separate and plant in the _Ulmarium_, or place designed for them; and which if it be in plumps (as they call them) within ten or twelve foot of each other, or in hedge-rows, it will be the better: For the elm is a tree of consort, sociable, and so affecting to grow in company, that the very best which I have ever seen, do almost touch one another: This also protects them from the winds, and causes them to shoot of an extraordinary height; so as in little more than forty years, they even arrive to a load of timber; provided they be sedulously and carefully cultivated, and the soil propitious.

For an elm does not thrive so well in the forest, as where it may enjoy scope for the roots to dilate and spread at the sides, as in hedge-rows and avenues, where they have the air likewise free: Note, that they spring abundantly by layers also.
5.