This is practicable also for other trees, where the soil is over-moist or unkind: For as the elm does not thrive in too dry, sandy, or hot grounds, no more will it abide the cold and spungy; but in places that are competently fertile, or a little elevated from these annoyances; as we see in the mounds, and casting up of ditches, upon whose banks the female sort does more naturally delight; though it seems to be so much more addicted to some places than to others, that I have frequently doubted, whether it be a pure _indigene_ or _translatitious_; and not only because I have hardly ever known any considerable woods of them (besides some few nurseries near Cambridge, planted I suppose for store) but almost continually in tufts, hedge-rows, and mounds; and that Shropshire, and several other counties, and rarely any beyond Stamford to Durham, have any growing in many miles together: Indeed Camden mentions a place in Yorkshire call'd Elmet; and V.Bede, _Eccl.

Hist.
l._ 11.c.14.

(speaking of a fire hap'ning there, and describing of the harm it did thereabout, _ulmarium_ or _ulmetum_) _evasit autem ignem altare, quia lapidium erat, & servatur adhuc in monasterio r.

abbatis & presbyteri thrythwuelf, quod in sylva elmete est_; but neither does this speak it miraculous, (for the altar it seems was stone) or that the elms grew spontaneously.

In the mean time, some affirm they were first brought out of Lombardy, where indeed I have observ'd very goodly trees about the rich grounds, with pines among them, _vitelus almi_; for I hear of none either in Saxony or Denmark, nor in France, (growing wild) who all came and prey'd upon us after the Romans.