810 FORESTS IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
ever, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, 
until comparatively recent times, been better understood than 
sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. Dut this 
latter branch of rural improvement now receives great attention 
from private individuals, though, so far as I know, not from the 
than those of broad-leaved trees. Pinas, pine, has been very loosely employed 
even in botanical nomenclature, and Kiefer, Fichte, and Tanne are often con- 
founded in German.—RossMissLER, Der Wald, pp. 256, 289, 324. A similar 
confusion in the names of this family of trees exists in India. Dr. Cleghorn, 
Inspector-General of the Indian Forests, informs us in his official Circular No. 
2, that the name of deodar is applied in some provinces to a cypress, In some 
to a cedar, and in others to a juniper. If it were certain that the adies of 
Cesar was the fir formerly and still found in peat-mosses, and that he 
was right in denying the existence of the beech in England in his time, 
the observation would be very important, because it would fix a date at 
which the fir had become extinct, and the beech had not yet appeared in the 
island. 
The English oak, though strong and durable, was not considered generally 
suitable for finer work in the sixteenth century. There were, however, ex- 
ceptions. ‘‘ Of all in Essex,” observes HARRISON, Holinshed, i., p. 357, ‘‘ that 
growing in Bardfield parke is the finest for ioiners craft: for oftentimes haue - 
Iseene of their workes made of that oke so fine and faire, as most of the 
wainescot that is brought hither out of Danske [Danzig] ; for our wainescot is 
not made in England. Yet diuerse haue assaied to deale with our okes to 
that end, but not with so good successe as they haue hoped, bicause the ab or 
juice will not so soone be remoued and cleane drawne out, which some attri- 
bute to want of time in the salt water.” 
This passage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt-water, as a 
mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison’s time. 
But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and other- 
wise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced at least three 
centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus men- 
tion is made of ‘‘ squared oak timber,” brought in from the country by carts, 
and of course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of ‘‘ planks 
of oak” coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cart-load. But in 
the chapter on the ‘‘ Customs of Billyngesgate,” pp. 208, 209, relating to goods 
imported from foreign countries, an import duty of one halfpenny is imposed 
on every hundred of boards called ‘‘ weynscotte ’—a term formerly applied 
only to oak—and of one penny on every hundred of boards called ‘*‘ Rygholt.”’ 
The editor explains ‘‘ Rygholt” as ‘‘ wood of Riga.” This was doubtless pine 
or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but 
they belong to the reign of Henry ITI. 
