The tree is of slow growth, and requires time to bring it to perfection, 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.

In winter it is not easy to raise these trees without a hot bed; but in warmer weather they stand well in the open air.

In the latter season they are subject to become weak and flaccid, and want support; for which purpose some gardeners have thought of splintering them up with birchen Twigs, which has seem’d of some service for the present, tho’ the plants have very soon come to the same or a more drooping state than before.

The late ingenious Mr. Motteux thought of restoring a fine plant he had in this condition, by tying it up with a Tomex or cord made of the bark of the Vitex, or Hempen-Tree:  but whether he made the ligature too straight, or that the nature of the Vitex is really in itself pernicious, he quite kill’d his plant thereby; which makes this universally condemn’d, as a dangerous experiment.

Some Virtuosi have thought of improving their trees for some purposes, by taking off the Nutmegs, which is however a bad way; they never seed after, and are good for little more than making whistles of, which are imported every year from Italy, and sell indeed at a good price.