54 S Y L V A BOOK in 



heads of water : Another was fill'd with better stuff, 

 wax and hony : Notwithstanding all defects, it yielded, 

 besides three tun of timber, 23 cords of wood. But 

 my own trees are but chips in comparison of a tree in 

 the neighbourhood, in which every foot forward, one 

 with another, was half a tun of timber ; it bore 5 foot 

 square, 40 foot long ; it contain'd 20 tun of timber, 

 most of it sold for 2os. per tun ; besides that, the 

 boughs afforded 25 cords of fuel-wood : This was call'd 

 the Lady-Oak : Is't not pity such goodly creatures 

 should be devoted to Vulcan ? &c. So far this noble 

 gent, to which I would add dirae, a deep execration of 

 iron-mills, and I had almost said iron-masters too, 



Quos ego ; sed motos praestat componere 



for I should never finish, to pursue these instances 

 through our once goodly magazines of timber for all 

 uses, growing in this our native country, comparable 

 (as I said) to any we can produce of elder times; and 

 that not only (though chiefly) for the encouragement 

 of planters, and preservers of one of the most excellent 

 and necessary materials in the world for the benefit 

 of man ; but to evince the continu'd vigor of nature, 

 and to reproach the want of industry in this age of 

 ours ; and (that we may return to the argument of 

 this large chapter) to assert the procerity and stature 

 of trees from their very great antiquity : For certainly, 

 if that be true, which is by divers affirmed concerning 

 the quercetum of Mamre (where the Patriarch en- 

 tertain'd his angelical guests) recorded by Eusebius to 

 have continued till the time of Constantine the Great, 

 we are not too prejudicately to censure what has been 

 produc'd for the proofs of their antiquity ; nor for 



