140 SYLVA AMERICANA. 



consists in being secure from injury by sea worms, which, during 

 the summer, commit such ravages in structures accessible to their 

 attacks ; but when exposed to be alternately wet and dry in the 

 flowing and ebbing of the tide, it decays as speedily as other 

 wood. This use of the cabbage tree is rapidly diminishing its 

 numbers, and probably the period is not far distant when it will 

 cease to exist within the boundaries of the United States. This 

 wood is found eminently proper for constructing forts, as it closes 

 without splitting on the passage of the ball. The base of the 

 leaves, when tender, is eaten with oil and vinegar, and resembles 

 the artichoke and the cabbage in taste, whence is derived the 

 name of Cabbage Tree. But to destroy a vegetable which has 

 been a century in growing, to obtain three or four ounces of a 

 substance neither richly nutritious nor peculiarly agreeable to the 

 palate, would be pardonable only in a desert which was destined 

 to remain uninhabited for ages. With similar prodigality of the 

 works of nature, the first settlers of Kentucky killed the buffalo, 

 an animal weighing twelve or fifteen hundred pounds, for the 

 pleasure of eating its tongue, and abandoned the carcase to the 

 beasts of the wilderness. 



