10. For, when I say winds, I mean their fiercest gusts, not their cold: For though it be said, _brumâque illæsa cupressus_, and that indeed no frost impeaches them (for they grow even on the snowy tops of Ida,) yet our cruel eastern winds do sometimes mortally invade them which have been late clipp’d, seldom the untouch’d or that were dressed in the Spring only: The effects of March and April winds (in the Year 1663, and 1665) accompanied with cruel frosts, and cold blasts, for the space of more than two months, night and day, did not amongst near a thousand cypresses (growing in my garden) kill above three or four, which for being very late cut to the quick (that is, the latter end of October) were raw of their wounds, took cold, and gangreen’d; some few others which were a little smitten towards the tops, might have escaped all their blemishes, had my gardener capp’d them but with a wisp of hay or straw, as in my absence I commanded. As for the frost of those winters (than which I believe there was never known a more cruel and deadly piercing since England had a name) it did not touch a cypress of mine, till it join’d forces with that destructive wind: Therefore for caution, clip not your cypresses late in Autumn, and cloath them (if young) against these winds; for the frosts they only discolour them, but seldom, or never hurt them, as by long experience I have found; nor altogether despair of the resurrection of a cypress, subverted by the wind; for some have redress’d themselves; and one (as Ziphilinus mentions) that rose the very next day; which happening about the reign of the emperor Vespasian, was esteem’d an happy omen: But of such accidents, more hereafter.
11. If you affect to see your cypress in standard, and grow wild, (which may in time come to be of a large substance, fit for the most immortal of timber, and indeed are the least obnoxious to the rigours of our Winters, provided you never clip or disbranch them) plant of the reputed male-sort; it is a tree which will prosper wonderfully; and where the ground is hot and gravelly, though (as we said) he be nothing so beautiful; and it is of this, that the Venetians make their greatest profit.
12. I have already shew’d how this tree is to be rais’d from the seed; but there was another method amongst the Ancients, who (as I told you) were wont to make great plantations of them for their timber; I have practis’d it my self, and therefore describe it.