The country-mans recreation, or The art of [brace] planting, graffing, and gardening, [brace] in three books. The first declaring divers waies of planting, and graffing, and the best times of the year, with divers commodities and secrets herein, how to set or plant with the root, and without the root; to sow or set pepins or curnels, with the ordering thereof, also to cleanse your grafts and cions, to help barren and sick trees, to kill worms and vermin, and to preserve and keep fruit; how to plant and proin your vines, and to gather and presse your grape; to cleanse and mosse your trees, to make your cider and perry, with many other secret practises which shall appear in the table following. The second treateth of the hop-garden, with necessary instructions for the making and maintenance thereof, ... with some directions for tabaco. Whereunto is added, The expert gardener, containing divers necessary and rare secrets belonging to that art, ... hereunto is likewise added the Art of angling.

Of the bed or upper floor of the Oste, whereon the Hope must be dried.

THe bed or upper floor, whereon your Hops shall lye to be dryed, must be placed almost five foot above the nether floor whereon the Furnace standeth.

The two walls at each side of the house, serve for the bed to rest upon two wayes.

Now must two other walls be built at each end of your Oste, whereon the other two parts of the bed must rest, and by this means shall you have a close square room beneath, be∣twixt the lower floor and the bed, so as the floor below shall be as wide as the bed above.

These two walls must also be made four foot above the bed (that is to say) about nine foot high.

At the one end below, besides the mouth of the Furnace, you must make a little doore into the room beneath the bed. At

the other end above the bed you must make a Window to shove off from the bed the dryed Hops, down into the room below prepared for them.

The bed should be made as the bed of any other Oste, saving that the Rails or Laths, which serve thereto, must be sawn very even one inch square, and laid one quarter of an inch asunder. But there may be no more beams to stay the Laths but one, and the same must be laid flat and not on edge, in the middest from one end of the room to the other, and the Laths must be let into the same beam, so as the upper side of the beam, and all the Laths may lye even.

If your Garden be very great, you may build your house somewhat larger, namely xxii. foot long, and ten foot broad, and then you must make in this Oste two Furnaces, three or four foot asunder, placing the doore betwixt them both, o∣therwise in all points like to that which I first described, and

[illustration] diagram of the interior of an oast house or hop kiln

The window pointed unto may not stand below in the nether room, but above as is before decla∣red.

the ground-work hereof is to set out here, that any Carpen∣ter will easily frame the whole house by the same Figure.

And now once again wishing you to make every doore, Window and joynt of this house close, I will leave building, and proceed to the drying of Hops, saving that I may not o∣mit to tell you, that you should either build all the walls of this Room with Brick, or else with Lime and Hair par∣git them over: and at the least that wall wherein the

mouth of the Furnace standeth, be made of Brick.

And although I have delayed you from time to time; and brought you from place to place, and tediously led you in and out, to and fro in the demonstration hereof, yet must I be bold to bring you round about again, even to the place where I left you picking, from whence you must speedily con∣vey your pickt Hops to the place built and prepared for them, and with as much speed hasten the driyng of them.