useful work, where all that can be expected or desir’d, concerning this profitable, as well as beautiful tree, is amply set down, _Hist. Plant._ lib. 25. cap. I. 5. I am assur’d (by a person most worthy of credit) that in the territory of Alzey (a country in Germany, where they were miserably distressed for wood, which they had so destroy’d as that they were reduc’d to make use of straw for their best fuel) a very large tract being newly plowed, (but the wars surprizing them, not suffer’d to sow,) there sprung up the next year a whole forest of pine-trees, of which sort of wood there was none at all, within less than fourscore miles; so as ’tis verily conjectur’d by some, they might be wafted thither from the country of Westrasia, which is the nearest part to that where they grow: If this be true, we are no more to wonder, how, when our oak-woods are grubb’d up, beech, and trees of other kinds, have frequently succeeded them: What some impetuous winds have done in this nature, I could produce instances almost miraculous: I shall say nothing of the opinion of our master Varro, and the learned{227:1} Theophrastus, who were both of a faith, that the seeds of plants drop’d out of the air. Pliny in his 16th. book, chap. 33. upon discourse of the Cretan cypress, attributes much to the _indoles_, and nature of the soil, virtue of the climate, and impressions of the air. And indeed it is very strange, what is affirm’d of that pitchy-rain, (reported to have fallen about Cyrene, the year 430. U. C.) after which, in a short time, sprung up a whole wood of the trees of _Laserpicium_, producing a precious gum, not much inferior to benzoin, if at least the story be warrantable: But of these aerial irradiations, various conceptions, and æquivocal productions without seed, &c. difficulties to be solv’d by our philosophers, whence those leaves of the platan come; which Dr. Spon tells us (in his _Travels_) are found floating in some of the fountains of the isles of the Strophades; no such tree growing near them by 30 miles: But these may haply be convey’d thro’ some unknown subterranean passage; for were it by the wind, it having a very large leaf, they would be been flying in, or falling out of the air.