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have seen them maintained) laid with great 

 curiosity ; these far excel those extravagant 

 plantations of them about London, where the 

 lops are permitted to grow without due and 

 skilful laying. There is a sort of elder which 

 has hardly any pith ; this makes exceedingly 

 stout fences, and the timber is very useful for 

 cogs of mills, butchers' skewers, and such 

 tough employments. Old trees do in time be- 

 come firm, and close up the hollowness to an 

 almost invisible pith. But if the medicinal 

 properties of the leaves, bark, berries, etc., 

 were thoroughly known, I cannot tell what our 

 countrymen would ail, for which he might not 

 fetch a remedy from every hedge, either for 

 sickness or wound. The inner bark of elder, 

 applied to any burning, takes out the fire 

 immediately; that, or in season the buds, 

 boiled in water-gruel for a breakfast, has 

 effected wonders in a fever ; and the decoction 

 is admirable to assuage inflammations and tet- 

 terous humors, and especially the scorbut. But 

 an extract, or theriaca (so famous in the poem 

 of Nicander), may be composed of the berries, 

 which is not only efficacious to eradicate this 

 epidemical inconvenience, and greatly to assist 

 longevity, but is a kind of catholicon against 

 all infirmities whatever ; and of the same ber- 

 ries is made an incomparable spirit, which, 



