AMERICAN NOTES 



Made in London. 



[T. I. p. 384. J Vax af et slags Porss. 



Wax from a kind of sweet willow. 



In many places where there are morasses or wet 

 grounds in North America there grows in abundance a 

 little bush, which is called by Botanists Myrica foliis 

 lanceolatis subserratis, fruciu baccato. Linn. Hort. Cliff. 

 455. Upsala 295. This Myrica or sweet willow, Pors, 

 instead of other fruit has berries which have on the 

 outside a kind of a wax, which is used as a candle, til 

 1JUS. They take the berries and cast them into a pot of 

 boiling water, when the wax melts off the berries by itself 

 and floats as a grease on the top of the water. When the 

 water is cold, the wax hardens, and can then be taken off 

 and kept till it is wanted. The candle is made from it in 

 the same way as tallow or ordinary wax. They mostly mix 

 this wax with the tallow they are going to make dip 

 candles of, as it makes the tallow candle harder and 

 firmer; for if the summers in Virginia are very warm 

 then the tallow candle becomes so soft and weak from 

 the great heat that it cannot stand straight but bends 

 down ; but if some of this wax is melted together with 



the tallow they never bend with the summer heat. Some 



H3 



