8. There are other rules concerning the situation of trees; the former author commending the north-east-wind both for the flourishing of the tree, and advantage of the timber; but to my observation in our climates, where those sharp winds do rather flanker than blow fully opposite upon our plantations, they thrive best; and there are as well other circumstances to be considered, as they respect rivers and marshes obnoxious to unwholsom and poysonous fogs, hills and seas, which expose them to the weather; and those _silvifragi venti_, our cruel and tedious western-winds; all which I leave to observation, because these accidents do so universally govern, that it is not easie to determine farther than that the timber is commonly better qualified which hath endur’d the colder aspects without these prejudices. And hence it is that Seneca observes, wood most expos’d to the winds to be the most strong and solid, and that therefore _Chiron_ made _Achilles’s_ spear of a mountain-tree; and of those the best, which grow thin, not much shelter’d from the north. Again, Theophrastus seems to have special regard to places; exemplifying in many of Greece, which exceeded others for good timber, as doubtless do our oaks in the Forest of Dean all others of England: And much certainly there may reasonably be attributed to these advantages for the growth of timber, and of almost all other trees, as we daily see by their general improsperity, where the ground is a hot gravel, and a loose earth: An oak, or elm in such a place shall not in an hundred years, overtake one of fifty, planted in its proper soil; though next to this, and (haply) before it, I prefer the good air. But thus have they such vast junipers in Spain; and the ash in some parts of the Levant (as of old near Troy) so excellent, as it was after mistaken for cedar, so great was the difference; as now the Cantabrian, or Spanish exceeds any we have elsewhere in Europe. And we shall sometimes in our own country see woods within a little of each other, and to all appearance, growing on the same soil, where oaks of twenty years growth, or forty, will in the same bulk, contain their double in heart and timber; and that in one, the heart will not be so big as a man’s arm, when the trunk exceeds a man’s body: This ought therefore to be weighed in the first plantation of copses, and a good eye may discern it in the first shoot; the difference proceeding doubtless from the variety of the seed, and therefore great care should be had of its goodness, and that it be gather’d from the best sort of trees, as was formerly hinted, Chap. 1.