Page:Sir Thomas Browne's works, volume 3 (1835).djvu/404

 found a name in Homer for pruning hedges, and clearing away thorns and briars; while King Attalus lives for his poisonous plantations of aconites, henbane, hellebore, and plants hardly admitted within the walls of Paradise; while many of the ancients do poorly live in the single names of vegetables; all stories do look upon Cyrus, as the splendid and regular planter.

According whereto Xenophon describeth his gallant plantation at Sardis, thus rendered by Strebaeus. "Arbores pari intervallo sitas, rectos ordines, et omnia perpulchrè in quincuncem directa." Which we shall take for granted as being accordingly rendered by the most elegant of the Latins, and by no made term, but in use before by Varro. That is, the rows and orders so handsomely disposed, or five trees so set together, that a regular angularity, and thorough prospect, was left on every side. Owing this name not only unto the quintuple number of trees, but the figure declaring that number, which being double at the angle, makes up the letter X, that is, the emphatical decussation, or fundamental figure.

Now though, in some ancient and modern practice, the area, or decussated plot might be a perfect square, answerable to a Tuscan pedestal, and the quinquernio or cinque point of a dye, wherein by diagonal lines the intersection was rectangular; accommodable unto plantations of large growing trees, and we must not deny ourselves the advantage of this order; yet shall we chiefly insist upon that of Curtius and Porta, in their brief description hereof. Wherein the decussis is made within in a longilateral square, with opposite angles, acute and obtuse at the intersection, and so upon progression making a rhombus or lozenge figuration, which seemeth very agreeable unto the original figure. Answerable whereunto we observe the decussated characters in many consulary coins, and even in those of Constantine and his sons, which pretend their pattern in the sky; the crucigerous ensign carried this figure, not transversely or rectangularly intersected, but in a