XX EVELYN'S " SYLVA " AND PRESENT TIMES 



the reign of Charles the Second, so far as the urgent 

 need of planting is concerned. 



The interest aroused in the Royal Society of that 

 day was caused " upon occasion of certain Quaeries 

 propounded to that illustrious assembly by the Hon- 

 ourable, the Principal Officers and Commissioners of 

 the Navy," as the title page of the Sylva has it. 



Evelyn emphasises this in his introduction : 



d 



*' Since there is nothing," he says, " which seems 

 more fatally to threaten a weakening, if not a dissolu- 

 tion, of the strength of this famous and flourishing 

 nation, than the sensible and notorious decay of her 

 ' wooden walls ' when, either through time, negligence, 

 or other accident, the present Navy shall be wprn 

 out and impaired ; it has been a very worthy and 

 seasonable advertisement in the honourable and princi- 

 pal Officers and Commissioners, what they have lately 

 suggested to this illustrious Society for the timely 

 prevention and redress of this intolerable defect. 

 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 proceeded ; but from the disproportionate 

 spreading of tillage, caused through the prodigious 

 havoc made by such as lately professing themselves 

 against root and branch (either to be reimbursed 

 their holy purchases, or for some other sordid respect) 

 were tempted not only to fell and cut down, but utterly 

 to extirpate, demolish and raze, as it were, all those 

 many goodly woods and forests, which our more 

 prudent ancestors left standing for the ornament and 

 service of their country. And this devastation has 

 now become so epidemical, that unless some favourable 

 expedient offer itself, and a way be seriously and 



