Sylva; Or, A Discourse of Forest Trees. Vol. 1 (of 2)Evelyn, John
History
Sylva; Or, A Discourse of Forest Trees. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Evelyn, John
Forests and forestry -- Early works to 1800; Gardening -- Early works to 1800; Trees -- Early works to 1800
box and horn-beam, tho’ both hard woods; so nor service with cornell,
&c. Oak is excellent for wheel-spokes, pins and pegs for tyling, &c. Mr.
Blith makes spars and small building-timber of oaks of eleven years
growth, which is a prodigious advance, &c. The smallest and streightest
is best, discover’d by the upright tenor of the bark, as being the most
proper for cleaving: The knottiest for water-works, piles, and the like,
because ’twill drive best, and last longest; the crooked, yet firm, for
knee-timber in shipping, millwheels, &c. In a word, how absolutely
necessary the oak is above all the trees of the forest in
naval-architecture, &c. consult Whitson, lib. 1. cap. 13.
Were planting of these woods more in use, we should banish our hoops of
hazel, &c. for those of good copse-oak, which being made of the younger
shoots, are exceeding tough and strong: One of them being of ground-oak,
will outlast six of the best ash; but this our coopers love not to hear
of, who work by the great for sale, and for others. The smaller
trunchions and spray, make billet, bavine and coals; and the bark is of
price with the tanner and dyer, to whom the very saw-dust is of use, as
are the ashes and lee for bucking linnen; and to cure the roapishness of
wine: And ’tis probable the cups of our acorns would tan leather as well
as the bark, I wonder no body makes the experiment, as it is done in
Turky with the _valonia_, which is a kind of acorn growing on the oaks.
The ground-oak, while young, is us’d for poles, cudgels and
walking-staffs, much come into mode of late, but to the wast of many a
hopeful plant which might have prov’d good timber; and I the rather
declaim against the custom, because I suspect they are such as are for
the most part cut, and stolen by idle persons, and brought up to London
in great bundles, without the knowledge or leave of the owners, who
would never have glean’d their copses for such trifling uses. Here I am
again to give a general notice of the peculiar excellency of the roots
of most trees, for fair, beautiful, chamleted and lasting timber,
applicable to many purposes; such as formerly made hafts for daggers,
hangers, knives, handles for staves, tabacco-boxes, and elegant
joyners-work, and even for some mathematical instruments of the larger
size, to be had either in, or near the roots of many trees; however ’tis
a kindness to premonish stewards and surveyors, that they do not
negligently wast those materials: Nor may we here omit to mention tables
for painters, which heretofore were us’d by the most famous artists,
especially the curious pieces of Raphael, Durer, and Holbin, and before
that of canvass, and much more lasting: To these add the galls,
misletoe, polypod, agaric (us’d in antidotes) uvæ, fungus’s to make
tinder, and many other useful excrescencies, to the number of above
twenty, which doubtless discover the variety of transudations,
percolations and contextures of this admirable tree; but of the several
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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