OF FOREST-TREES. 



213 



and that not only (though chiefly) for the encouragement of planters, and CHAP, 

 preservers of one of the most excellent and necessary materials in the ^^^^ 

 world for the benefit of man, but to evince the continued vigour of na- 

 ture, and to reproach the want of industry in this age of ours ; and (that 

 we may return to the argument of this large chapter) to assert the pro- 

 cerity and stature of trees from their very great antiquity : for certainly, 

 if that be true, which is by divers affirmed concerning the Quercetum of 

 Mamre, (where the patriarch entertained his angelic guests,) recorded by 

 Eusebius to have continued till the time of Constantine the Great, we 

 are not too prejudicately to censure what has been produced for the 

 proofs of their antiquity ; nor for my part do I much question the au- 

 thorities. But let this suffice ; what has been produced, being not only 

 an historical speculation of encouragement and use, but such as was per- 

 tinent to the subject under consideration, as well as what I am about to 

 add concerning the texture and similar parts of the body of trees, which 

 may also hold in shrubs, and other ligneous plants, because it is both a 

 curious and rational account of their anatomization, and worthy of the 

 sagacious inquiry of that learned person, the late Dr. Goddard, as I find 

 it entered amongst other of those precious collections of this illustrious 

 society. 



The trunk or bough of a tree being cut transversely plain and smooth, 

 sheweth several circles or rings more or less obicular, according to the 

 external figure, in some parallel proportion, one without the other, from 

 the centre of the wood to the inside of the bark, dividing the whole into 

 so many circular spaces. These rings are more large, gross, and distinct 

 in colour and substance in some kind of trees, generally in such as grow 

 to a great bulk in a short time, as Fir, Ash, &c. smaller or less distinct 

 in those that either not at all, or in a longer time grow great ; as 

 Quince, Holly, Box, Lignum Vitas, Ebony, and the like sad-coloured and 

 hard-woods ; so that by the largeness or smallness of the rings, the 

 quickness or slowness of the growth of any tree may, perhaps, at 

 certainty be estimated. 



The spaces are manifestly broader on the one side than on the other, 

 especially the more outer, to a double proportion, or more ; the inner 

 being near an equality, 



T olume II. E 6 



