rarely seeding to any purpose before the fifteenth year; when the fruits
coming to good maturity, yield a viscous Juice or balmy _succus_, which
being from time to time discharged at the _Pistillum_ is mostly bestow'd
upon the open _Calyx's_ of the _Frutex Vulvaria_ or _flow'ring Shrub_
usually spreading under the shade of this tree, and whose parts are by a
wonderful mechanism adapted to receive it. The ingenious Mr. _Richard
Bradley_ is of opinion, the _Frutex_ is hereby impregnated, and then
first begins to bear; he therefore accounts this _Succus_ the _Farina
foecundans_ of the plant: and the learned _Leonhard Fucksius_, in his
_Historia Stirpium insigniorum_, observes the greatest sympathy between
this tree and shrub, _They are_, says he, _of the same genus, and do
best in the same bed, the_ Vulvaria _itself being indeed no other than
a_ female Arbor Vitae.

It is produced in most Countries, tho' it thrives more in some than
others, where it also increases to a larger size. The height here in
_England_ rarely passes nine, or at the most, eleven inches, and that
chiefly in _Kent_, whereas in _Ireland_, it comes to far greater
dimensions, is so good, that many of the natives entirely subsist upon
it, and when transplanted, have been sometimes known to raise good
houses with single plants of this sort.

As the _Irish_ soil is accounted the best, others are as remarkably bad
for its cultivation; and the least and worst in the world are said to be
about _Harborough_ and the _Forest of Sherard_.

The stem seems to be of the _sensitive_ tribe, tho' herein differing
from the more common _Sensitives_; that whereas they are known to shrink
and retire from even the gentlest touch of a Lady's hand, this rises on
the contrary, and extends itself when it is so handled.