1 64 S Y L V A BOOK in 



begin to clear their high-ways by two iron-mills : 

 I am sure their zeal has sufficiently wasted our stately 

 woods, and steel in the bowels of their mother Old- 

 England; and 'twere now but expedient, their brethren 

 should hasten thither to supply us with iron for the 

 peace of our days ; whilst his Majesty becomes the 

 great sovereign of the ocean, free commerce, nemorum 

 vindex & instaurator magnus. This were the only 

 way to render both our countries habitable indeed, 

 and the fittest sacrifice for the royal oaks, and their 

 Hamadryads to whom they owe more than a slight 

 submission : And he that should deeply consider the 

 prodigious waste which these voracious iron and 

 glass-works have formerly made but in one county 

 alone, the county of Sussex, for 120 miles in length, 

 and thirty in breadth (for so wide and spacious was 

 the ancient Andradswald, of old one entire wood, but 

 of which there remains now little or no sign) would 

 be touched with no mean indignation: I named the 

 Sussex glass-works ; but what spoil and prodigious 

 consumption the salt-works had made in Worcester- 

 shire, see the complaint of Mr. Camden speaking of 

 Feckenham Forest in his days, now necessitated to 

 use other coal; certainly, the goodly rivers and forests 

 of the other World, would much better become these 

 destructive works, our iron, and saw-mills, than these 

 exhausted countries ; and we prove gainers by the 

 timely removal : I have said this already, and I cannot 

 too often inculcate it for the concerns of a nation, 

 whose only protection (under God) are her wooden 

 walls. 



13. Another thing to be recommended (and which 

 would prove no less than thirty years, in some places 

 forty, and generally twenty years advance) were a 



