62 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



Whether or not our palates are more de- 

 bauched than were the palates of earlier 

 days, we have not reverted to acorns as food ; 

 and the use of iron has driven out oak- 

 wood, indeed wood of any kind, from some of 

 the purposes it used to serve. His Majesty's 

 navy is no longer dependent on forests of oak ; 

 and we read — ^with a smile or a sigh? — the 

 lament with which Evelyn opens his book : 

 " Since there is nothing which seems more 

 fatally to threaten a weakening, if not a dis- 

 solution of the strength of this famous and 

 flourishing nation, than the sensible and notori- 

 ous decay of her wooden-walls, when either 

 through time, negligence, or other accident, 

 the present navy shall be worn out and im- 

 paired ; it has been a very worthy and season- 

 able advertisement in the Honourable the 

 principal Officers and Commissioners, what 

 they have lately suggested to this illustrious 

 society [The Royal Society] for the timely 

 prevention and redress of this intolerable de- 

 fect. For it has not been the late increase 

 of shipping alone, the multiplication of glass- 

 works, iron-furnaces, and the like, from whence 

 this impolitic diminution of our timber has pro- 



