CHAP, xvn SYLVA 143 



whitest part of the old wood, found commonly in 

 doating birches, is made the grounds of our effemin- 

 ate farin'd gallants sweet powder ; and of the quite 

 consum'd and rotten (such as we find reduc'd to a 

 kind of reddish earth in superannuated hollow-trees) 

 is gotten the best mould for the raising of divers 

 seedlings of the rarest plants and flowers ; to say 

 nothing here of the magisterial fasces, for which an- 

 ciently the cudgels were us'd by the factor, for lighter 

 faults, as now the gentler rods by our tyrannical 

 pedagogues. 



3. I should here add the uses of the water too, had 

 I full permission to tamper with all the medicinal 

 virtues of trees : But if the sovereign effects of the 

 juice of this despicable tree supply its other defects 

 (which make some judge it unworthy to be brought 

 into the catalogue of woods to be propagated) I may 

 perhaps for once, be permitted to play the empiric, 

 and to gratifie our laborious wood-man with a draught 

 of his own liquor ; and the rather, because these kind 

 of secrets are not yet sufficiently cultivated ; and 

 ingenious planters would by all means be encourag'd 

 to make more trials of this nature, as the Indians and 

 other nations have done on their palmes ; and trees 

 of several kinds, to their great emolument. The 

 mystery is no more than this : About the beginning 

 of March (when the buds begin to be proud and 

 turgid, and before they explain into leaves) with a 

 chizel and a mallet, cut a slit almost as deep as the 

 very pith, under some bough or branch of a well- 

 spreading birch ; cut it oblique, and not long-ways 

 (as a good chirurgion would make his orifice in a 

 vein) inserting a small stone or chip, to keep the 

 lips of the wound a little open. Sir Hugh Plat, 



