STUDY XI. 299 



one of which is fufficient to form a large canoe. 

 This bark is fimilar to leather in pliancy, and fo 

 incorruptible by humidity, that, in Ruffia, I have 

 feen fome of it extracted from under the earth 

 which covered powder magazines, perfectly found, 

 though it had lain there from the time of Peter 

 the Great. 



If we may depend on the teftimony of Pliny and 

 of Plutarch, there were found at Rome, four hun- 

 dred years after the death of Numa, the books 

 which that great King had commanded to be de- 

 posited with his body in the tomb. The body was 

 entirely confumed ; but the books, which treated 

 of Philofophy and Religion, were in fuch a date of 

 prefervation, that Petilius, the Pretor, undertook to 

 read them, by command of the Senate. On the re- 

 port which he made refpefting their contents, they 

 were ordered to be burnt. They were written on 

 the bark of the birch-tree. This bark confifts of an 

 accumulation of ten or twelve fheets, white and 

 thin, like paper, the place of which it fupplied to 

 the ancients. 



Nature prefents to Man different traje&iles on 

 different (bores. She has planted, on the banks 

 of the rivers of India, the bamboo, an enormous 

 reed, which rifes there fometimes to the height of 

 iixty feet, and fwells to the fize of a man's thigh. 



The 



