OF FOREST-TREES. 



75 



all who deal in liquors, cannot be without it ; ancient persons prefer CHAP. IV. 

 it before leather for the soles pf their shoes, being light, dry, and resisting ^-^""v^^^ 

 moisture ; whence the Germans name it pantoffel-holts, (slipper-wood,) 

 perhaps from the Greek 7rav7o? et toiXkoq ; for I find it first applied to that 

 purpose by the Grecian ladies, whence they were called light-footed : 

 1 know not whether the epithet do still belong to that sex ; but from 

 them it is likely the Venetian dames took it up for their monstrous 

 choppiness ; affecting or usurping an artificial eminency above men, 

 which nature has denied them. Of one of the sorts of cork are made 

 pretty cups, and other vessels, esteemed good to drink out of for hectical 

 persons. The Egyptians made their cofiins of it, which, being lined with 

 a resinous composition, preserved their dead incorrupt. The poor 

 people in Spain lay broad planks of it by their bed-side to tread on, 

 (as great persons use Turkey and Persian carpets,) to defend them from 

 jthe floor, and sometimes they line or wainscot the walls and inside 

 of their houses built of stone, with this bark, which renders them very 

 warm, and corrects the moisture of the air ; also they employ it for 

 bee-hives, and to double the insides of their contemplores and leather- 

 cases, wherein they put flasqueras with snow to refrigerate their wine. 

 This tree has beneath the Cortex, or Cork, two other coats, or libri, 

 of which one is reddish, which they strip from the bole when it is felled 

 only, and this bears a good price with the tanner ; the rest of the wood 

 is very good firing, and applicable to many other uses of building, 

 palisade-work, &c. The ashes drunk, stop the bloody-flux, 



ILEX. 



ILEX ' major Glandifera, or. Great Scarlet OAK, of several species, 

 and various in the shape of their leaf, pointed, rounder, longer, &C. 



' QUE Reus ( ILEX ) foliis ovato-oblongis indivisis serratisque petiolatis subtus incanis, 

 cortice integro. Lin. Sp. PI. 1412. Ilex arborea. Bauh. Hist. i. p. 95. The, EVERGREfiN 



OAK. 



The ILEX is of the class and order Monoecia Polyandria. 



~- This is a well-known evergreen, of which there are several varieties, differing greatly 

 in the size and shape of their leaves j but these will all arise from acorns of the same 

 tree ; nay, the lower and upper branches of the same tree are frequently garnished with 



