S Y L V A BOOK in 



the several Inns of Court ; nay, even that (compara- 

 tively, new plantation) in my Lord of Bedford's 1 

 garden, Sfc. and where-ever they stand in the more 

 interior parts of this city ; that they be not over- 

 hasty, or by any means persuaded to cut down any 

 of their old trees, upon hope of new more flourishing 

 plantations ; thickning, or repairing deformities ; be- 

 cause they grew so well when first they were set : it 

 is to be consider'd how exceedingly that pernicious 

 smoak of the sea-coal is increas'd in, and about Lon- 

 don since they where first planted, and the buildings 

 invironing them, and inclosing it in amongst them, 

 which does so universally contaminate the air, that 

 what plantations of trees shall be now begun in any 

 of those places, will have much ado, great difficulty, 

 and require a long time to be brought to any tolerable 

 perfection : Therefore let them make much of what 

 they have; and tho' I discourage none, yet I can 

 animate none to cut down the old. 



36. And here might now come in a pretty specu- 

 lation, what should be the reason after general fellings, 

 and extirpations of vast woods of one species, the next 

 spontaneous succession should be of quite a different 

 sort ? We see indeed something of this in our gardens 

 and corn-fields (as the best of poets witnesses,) but that 

 may be much imputed to the alteration, by improve- 

 ment, or detriment of the soil and other accidents : 

 Whatever the cause may be, since it appears not from 

 any universal decay of nature (sufficiently exploded) I 

 shall only here produce matter of fact, and that it 

 ordinarily happens. As in some goodly woods form- 

 erly belonging to my grandfather that were all of oak ; 



1 Since the first publication of this discourse, most of those groves and trees 

 have been cut down, to give place for buildings, and turn'd into streets. 



