HOLLY 157 



to us, however it may have struck Pliny, as being a few 

 centuries too much for credence. The authority of 

 Pliny was so potent and so far-reaching that for centuries 

 after his death it needed but to add " as Pliny saith " to 

 the wildest statement, to secure for it complete acceptance. 

 It was, therefore, almost a shock, even to ourselves, when 

 we found the Editor of the Athenian Mercury in 1693, 

 declaring that he meant his periodical to last " as long 

 at least as the Raven lives, which is a very tough liv'd 

 Bird, and has ten times as many Lives as a Cat, if Pliny's 

 Credit is Authentick ; and he's very Sawcy that dares 

 Question the Authority of such a Reverend Old Boy as 

 that, as a great many Impertinent Dogmatical Upstarts 

 have done very often of late, and we amongst the rest." 

 In England one rarely finds holly-trees of any great 

 size, though at Claremont, in Surrey, is one that stands 

 eighty feet high, and in the New Forest may be seen 

 several with a girth of eight or nine feet.^ The timber 

 becomes valuable when the tree is of any considerable 

 size, and so the trees are felled. The wood is very tough, 



Save elrae, ash, and crab-tree for cart and for plough, 

 Save step for a stile, of the crotch of the bough. 

 Save hazel for forkes, save sallow for rake, 

 Save hulver and thorne, thereof flail for to make. 



The flail is now well-nigh as obsolete as a pair of 

 snuffers, but those who have heard its resounding blows on 



' "One that I know," says the author of Adam in Eden, " had a Holly 

 Tree growing in his Orchard of that bignesse that being cut down he caused 

 it to be sawn out in Boards, and made himselfe thereof a Coffin, and if I 

 mistake not left enough to make his wife one also. But the parties were 

 very corpulent, and therefore you may imagine that the Tree could not 

 be small." 



