42 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK 11. again of the great opportunities and encouragement we have of every 

 ■'^''Y^^ (lay improving our stores with so many useful trees from the American 

 plantations ; for which I have the suffrage of the often-cited Mr. Ray, 

 who is certainly a very able judge. Might we not therefore attempt the 

 more frequent Locust, Sassafras, and that sort of Maple, or Sugar-tree, 

 whose juice yields that sweet ? Also the Halymus Latifolius, and several 

 others for encouragement. But I produce not these particulars, and 

 other amoena vireta already mentioned, as signifying any thing to timber, 

 the main desire of this treatise, (though I read of some Myrtles so tail, 

 as to make spear-shafts,) but to exemplify in what may be farther added 

 to ornament and pleasure, by a cheap and most agreeable industry. 



" linen, and wrap it round the body ; but as the poultice burns like fire, they commonly 

 " lay a cloth between it and the body, otherwise it would bum and scorch the skin. — 

 " I have heard this remedy praised beyond measure, by people who said they had 

 " experienced its good effects. An Iroques Indian told me, that a decoction of Thuya 

 " leaves was used as a remedy for the cough. In the neighbourhood of Saratoga, they use 

 " this decoction in the intermitting fever. 



" This tree has, in common with many other American trees, the quality of growing 

 " freely in marshes and thick woods, which may be with certainty called its native places. 

 " However, there is scarce a single Thuya-tree in those places which bears seeds ; if, on the 

 " other hand, a tree accidentally stands on the outside of a wood, on the sea-shore, 

 " or in a field, where the air can freely come at it, it is always full of seeds. I have found 

 " this to be the case with the Thuya, on innumerable occasions." ^ 



