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
2. The timber of the sort is useful for the joyner, and of which I have
seen a room curiously wainscotted: Also for the engraver of wood-cuts,
bows, pullys, skrews, mill-spindles and other; goads to drive oxen with,
&c. pistol and gun-stocks, and for most that the wild-pear-tree, serves;
and being of a very delicate grain for the turner, and divers
curiosities, and looks beautifully, and is almost everlasting, being
rubb’d over with oyl of linseed, well boil’d, it may be made to
counterfeit ebony, or almost any Indian wood, colour’d according to art:
Also it is taken to build with, yielding beams of considerable
substance: The shade is beautiful for walks, and the fruit not
unpleasant, especially the second kind, of which with new wine and
honey, they make a _conditum_ of admirable effect to corroborate the
stomach; and the fruit alone is good in dysentery’s and lasks. The water
distill’d from the stalks of the flowers and leaves in M. B. and twice
rectified upon fresh matter, is incomparable for consumptive and tabid
bodies, taking an ounce daily at several times: Likewise it cures the
green-sickness in virgins, and is prevalent in all fluxes; distill’d
warm into the ears it abates the pain: The wood or bark contus’d, and
applied to any green wound, heals it; and the powder thereof drank in
oyl olive, consolidates inward ruptures: Lastly, the salt of the wood
taken in decoction of _althæa_ to three grains, is an incomparable
remedy to break, and expel gravel. The service gives the husbandman an
early presage of the approaching Spring, by extending his adorned buds
for a peculiar entertainment, and dares peep out in the severest
Winters.
3. That I rank this amongst the forest berry-bearing trees, (frequent in
the hedges, and growing wild in Herefordshire, and many places; for I
speak not here of our orchard-cherries, said to have been brought into
Kent out of Flanders by Hen. VIII.) is chiefly from the suffrage of that
industrious planter Mr. Cooke, from whose ingenuity and experience (as
well as out of gratitude for his frequent mentioning of me in his
elaborate and useful work) I acknowledge to have benefited my self, and
this edition; though I have also given no obscure tast of this pretty
tree in Chap. XX.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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