ON THE WAX TREE OF LOUISIANA. 195 



How great are the advantages our agriculture might expect It even grows 

 from this acquifition, fince the myrica has long ago been feen weUm p ™fiia, 

 to flourifh in the dry fands of Pruffia. Cit. Thieboult of the 

 academy of Berlin, has communicated this interefting fact to 

 me in the following note. 



The late Mr. Sulzer author of the general dictionary of the Narrative of a 

 line arts, obtained from Frederic the Great a portion of wafte j^eno/ Mr. 

 ground of confiderable extent on the banks of the Spree, half Sulzer. 

 a league from Berlin, in a place called the Moabites. How- 

 ever ungrateful this foil might appear as it prefented only a 

 very fcanty and thin turf, upon a fine and light fand, Mr. Sulzer 

 converted it into a garden very agreeable and worthy of a 

 philofopher. Among othei remarkable things, he made a 

 plantation of foreign trees compofed of five long rows, in the 

 direction from Eaft to Weft. There were not two trees in 

 fucceffion of the fame fpecies ; he had placed in the rows 

 moft expofed to the North, none but fuch as were loftieft and 

 mod capable of refitting the rigours of the climate, So that 

 by proceeding from North to South, the firft row prefented 

 only trees of about feventy feet in height, the fecond trees 

 between twenty-five and thirty feet high, and fo in fucceffion 

 in an amphitheatre, where all the trees enjoyed the fun, at 

 leaft in a part, and the weakeft were (heltered by thofe which 

 were more hardy. 



It was in the fouthernmoft row, that I obferved a kind of 

 bufh only two or three feet high, which Mr. Sulzer called the 

 wax tree. All the vifitors took particular notice of this tree 

 in preference to all others, on account of the delicious odour 

 of its leaves, which they preferved a very long time. 



Citizen Thieboult afterwards fpeaks of the extraction of the 

 wax. This operation does not differ from that related by Mr. 

 Alexander. 



I have feen, adds he afterwards, a fingle candle of this wax Remarkable 



perfume the three chambers which compofed the particular perfume from 

 ,.,,„, i i • i • • tne candles of 



apartment or Mr. Sulzer, not only during the time it was veg . wax . 



lighted, but alfo for the reft of the evening. 



Without doubt the myrica cultivated at Berlin, was more 



odoriferous than that which grows with us, for ours does not 



emit the fame perfume. Mr. Sulzer had the project of making 



candles of this wax, not bleached, but covered with our wax 



for the fake of beauty. The heirs of the academician have 



O 2 fold 



