22O S Y L V A BOOK II 



and courage ; for the defence and preservation of 

 their countrey. Bespeaking my reader's pardon for 

 this digression, we proceed in the next to other 

 useful exoticks. 



CHAPTER III. 



Of the Fir, Pine, Pinaster, Pitch-tree, Larsh, and 

 Subterranean trees. 



1. Abies, pice a, pinus, pinaster, larsh, fc. are all 

 of them easily rais'd of the kernels and nuts, which 

 may be gotten out of their poly sperm and turbinate 

 cones, clogs, and squams, by exposing them to the 

 sun, or a little before the fire, or in warm-water, till 

 they begin to gape, and are ready to deliver themselves 

 of their numerous burthens. 



2. There are of the fir two principal species ; the 

 picea, or male, which is the bigger tree ; very beautiful 

 and aspiring, and of an harder wood, and hirsute leaf : 

 And the silver-fir, or female. I begin with the first : 

 The boughs whereof are flexible and bending ; the 

 cones dependent, long and smooth, growing from the 

 top of the branch ; and where gaping, yet retain the 

 seeds in their receptacles, when fresh gather'd, giving 

 a grateful fragrancy of the rosin : The fruit is ripe in 

 September. But after all, for a perfecter account of 

 the true and genuine fir-tree, (waving the distinction 

 of sapinum, from sapinus, literd sed und differing, as of 

 another kind) is a noble upright tree from the ground, 

 smooth and even, to the eruption of the branches ; as 

 is that they call the sapinum, and thence tapering to 

 the summit of ihtfusterna : The arms and branches 



