THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE 111 



standard book on the subject of the culture of 

 trees. It is held to be responsible for a great 

 outbreak of tree-planting. The introduction 

 to Nisbet's edition gives figures which demon- 

 strate the shortage in the available supply of 

 oak timber during the seventeenth century. 

 The charm of Evelyn's style and the practical 

 nature of his book, which ran into four editions 

 before the author's death, arrested this decline 

 ("be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, 

 Jock, when ye're sleeping" as the laird of 

 Dumbiedykes counselled his son), and to the 

 Sylva of John Evelyn is largely due the fact 

 that the oak timber used for the British ships 

 which fought the French in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury sufficed, but barely sufficed, for the 

 national needs. 



Pepys, whose naive and frank self -revela- 

 tions have made him the most popular and 

 the most frequently read of diarists, was not 

 quite of the same class of student to which 

 Lord Herbert of Cherbury or John Evelyn 

 belonged. But, gifted as he was with an undy- 

 ing and insatiable curiosity, nothing was too 

 trivial or too odd for his notice and his record ; 



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