CHAP, iv S Y L V A 1 09 



attempts of detecting more cheap and useful processes, 

 for ways of charing-coals, peat, and the like fuliginous 

 materials ; as the accomplished Mr. Boyl has intimated 

 to us in the fifth of those his precious Essays con- 

 cerning the usefulness of natural philosophy, part 11. 

 cap. 7, 6fc. to which I refer the curious. In the 

 mean time, were not he worthy a statue of gold, that 

 (sa/vo to our New-Castle-trade and seminary of mar- 

 iners) should in this penury, and of fire-wood, about 

 so monstrous a devourer, as this vast city (poyson'd 

 with smoak and soot) find out an expedient, that 

 should within the space of five and twenty years, not 

 only free it from all this hellish and pernicious fog, 

 by furnishing it with fuel sufficient to feed and 

 maintain all its hearths and fires with sweet and 

 wholsome billet ? This, the ingenious Mr. Nourse 

 seems to demonstrate, and I think not impossible, 

 whilst my Fumifugium is long since vanished in aura. 

 There is no very great store of wood about Madrid, 

 where the Winters are sharp and so very piercing, 

 that there is spent no less than four millions of arrobas 

 of char-coal (every arroba being 3 quarters of our 

 bushel) and pays to the king a real per arroba before 

 it comes into the town, or is sold : It is charr'd of the 

 enzina or cork-tree ; besides which they use very little 

 fuel-wood, it being exceeding hard, and consequently 

 lasting and sweet. But to return to the law. 



26. By the preamble of the Statute 7 Ed. 6. one 

 may perceive (the measures compared) how plentiful 

 fuel was in the time of Ed. the 4th. to what it was 

 in the reigns of his successors : This suggested a 

 review of sizes, and a reformation of abuses ; in 

 which it was enacted, that every sack of coals should 

 contain four bushels ; every taleshide to be four foot 



