58 SYLVA BOOK m 



drying and breaking with innumerable fissures, grow- 

 ing wider and deeper, as the body of the tree grows 

 bigger, and mouldering away on the outside. 



Though it cannot appear by reason of the continual 

 decay of it, upon the account aforesaid ; yet it is 

 probable, the bark of a tree hath had successively as 

 many integuments as the wood ; and that it doth 

 grow by acquisition of a new one yearly on the 

 inside, as the wood doth on the outside ; so that the 

 chief way, and conveyance of nourishment to both 

 the wood and the bark, is between them both. 



The least bud appearing on the body of a tree, 

 doth as it were make perforation through the several 

 integuments to the middle, or very near ; which part 

 is as it were, a root of the bough into the body of 

 the tree ; and after becomes a knot, more hard than 

 the other wood : And when it is larger, manifestly 

 shewing it self also to consist of several integuments, 

 by the circles appearing in it, as in the body : More 

 hard, probably, because straitned in room for growth ; 

 as appears by its distending, buckling as it were, the 

 integuments of the wood about it ; so implicating 

 them the more ; whence a knotty piece of wood is so 

 much harder to cleave. 



It is probable, that a cyon or bud, upon graffing, 

 or inoculating, doth as it were, root it self into the 

 stock in the same manner as the branches, by produc- 

 ing a kind of knot. Thus far the accurate Doctor. 



2 1 . To which permit me to add only (in reference 

 to the circles we have been speaking of) what another 

 curious enquirer suggests to us ; namely, that they 

 are caus'd by the pores of the wood, through which 

 the sap ascends in the same manner as between the 

 wood and the bark ; and that in some trees, the bark 



