Making and Knowing
A minimal edition of BnF Ms Fr 640

[TOC] | [diplomatic]

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Turtles

Males have shells that turn down at the end near their tails, and their underbelly shells have lined marks along the bottom from their tails to their head. And the females have neither the turned down shell near the tail nor the marks.

Drying colors

Soot black & others would not dry in oil if one did not put verdigris with it.

Painter

Colors laid down twice are more gritty in and of themselves, if they are not managed. Otherwise, one paints on wood; otherwise on canvas; otherwise on walls.

Gardening

To graft, it is necessary to take the new growth that was produced within the year by the tree you wish to graft. And cut off a branch in which you can see that beside the place where the leaves join the stem, there are little buttons we call buds, the initial stages of a sprout. With dexterity you must, with a very sharp pen—knife, cut in the shape of a graft a small bit of the skin of the tree, which contains a bud or a sprout with the leaf, as you can see in B. Then on the tender wood, which is full of sap, and on which you wish to graft, cut quickly two lines as you can see , then add in the middle a slit thusly

Figure Figure . Then with the point of your pen—knife separate the bark from the tree, and open it from the slit in the middle, and having neatly lodged your graft so that nothing is sticking out, only the sprout, binding everything well and wrap the whole thing with a bit of linen or soft string. In this way, there will be nothing uncovered but the leaf, which in three or 4 days will indicate whether the graft has taken hold, by being green. Keep your graft in this way for seven or eight days. Then unwrap it, and join it to the bark, keeping the sprout itself straight, and then rewrap the whole thing gently, but not as strongly as before. And if there is any growth, leave it some room to grow and then three or four times

Figure at left bottom margin Figure

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