. A description and history of vegetable substances, used in the arts, and in domestic economy . equence ofthe great improvement of the iron manufacture, andthe cheapness of that article, it can be apphed tomany purposes for which the gi-eat strength of theyew was well adapted. The custom of clipping yews into fantastic shapeswas much practised in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. Some of our chvuchyards still havetheir yew-trees thus cut into the pretended likenessesof birds and beasts. At Bedfont, in Middlesex, thereare two celebrated trees, whose branches are annuallyshaped into somet
. A description and history of vegetable substances, used in the arts, and in domestic economy . equence ofthe great improvement of the iron manufacture, andthe cheapness of that article, it can be apphed tomany purposes for which the gi-eat strength of theyew was well adapted. The custom of clipping yews into fantastic shapeswas much practised in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. Some of our chvuchyards still havetheir yew-trees thus cut into the pretended likenessesof birds and beasts. At Bedfont, in Middlesex, thereare two celebrated trees, whose branches are annuallyshaped into something like the form of a peacock, H 3 78 VEGETAPLE SUBSTANCES. with a date shewinp: when this piece of useless laboui*was first performed. We think it is 1708. TheRomans, as we learn from Phnys letters, cnt theirevergreens into the fantastic shapes of birds andbeasts. Lord Bacon, with his Avonted good sense,protested against this practice, which was the fashionof his time. I, for my part, he says in his Essays, do not like images cut out in juniper and othergarden stuff; they be for Cypress—Cupressus sempervirens. Of the Cypress, of which there are twenty-two spe-cies, it will be necessary to mention only two,—theEvergreen Cypress (^C7/p}-ess7is sempervirens), and theWhite Cedar {Cvpressus thyoides). Of the first,there are two \ arieties, the upright and the spread-ing,—the last giowing to the larger size, and beingconsequently the more valuable, as a timber tree. Itis a native of the south eastern countries of Europe,of the Levant, of China, and of several other partsof Asia. It thrives best in a warm, sandy, or gravelly THE CYPRESS. 79f soil; and thouo;]i it has not been much cultivated inEnc^land as a timber tree, yet it seems well adaptedfor many situations in the southern parts of the king-dom, it is true that, in the early stages of itsgrowth, it has been supposed to fall a victim to thekeen frosts of our climate; yet Evelyn says, that hehad ujiwards of a
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