OF FOREST-TREES. 5 



ceduouSj fruticant and shrubby ; feras and wild ; or more civilized and INTROD. 

 domestic ; and such as are sative and hortensial subalternate to the other ; 

 but of which I give only a touch, distributing the rest into these two 

 classes, the dry and the aquatic ; both of them applicable to the same 

 civil uses of building, utensils, ornament, and fuel : for to dip into their 

 medicinal virtues is none of my province, though I sometimes glance at 

 them with due submission, and in few instances =. 



4. Among the Dry, I esteem the more principal and solid to be, the 

 Oak, Elm, Beech, Ash, Chestnut, Walnut, &c. ; the less principal, the 

 Service, Maple, Lime-tree, Horn-beam, Quick-beam, Birch, Hasel, &c. 

 together with all their subalternate and several kinds : 



Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint. 

 Est Humerus ; neque enim numero comprendere refert : 

 Quem qui scire velit, Lybici velit sequoris idem 



Discere, quam multae Zephiro turbentur arense. virg. georg. ii. 



I pass the rest, whose ev'ry race and name. 

 And kinds are less material to my theme : 

 Which who would learn, as soon may tell the sands, 

 Driv'n by the western winds on Lybian lands. 



earth, rises two feet high, scarce exceeds the same number of inches in a dry and gravelly 

 soil. The learned Dr. Alston, in his Tyrocimum Botanicum, wishes to considet the distinction 

 into Trees and Shrubs, as a true natural distinction, and endeavours to trace its foundation 

 in the internal structure of the plants themselves. All trees, says he, whether they bear 

 buds or not, are covered with two barks, the outer and inner, called by botanists 

 co7-tex and liber. Shrubs differ from herbaceous vegetables in the duration of their stems ; 

 from trees in the nature of their covering, which is not a bark, but a cuticle or simple skin. 

 This thought is ingenious ; but the fact on which it depends is not sufficiently ascertained. 

 The farther distinction into shrubs and under-shrubs, which is exceedingly arbitrary and 

 indeterminate, was first suggested by Clusius, in a work entitled, Rariores et Exoticoe 

 Plantce, published in 1576 ,• and afterwards adopted by Caesalpinus, and others. 



In this Mr. Evelyn imitates Virgil, who, in a few instances, gives the medicinal virtues 

 of trees and shrubs : 



Ipsa ingens arbos, faciemque simillima Lauro : 

 Et, si non aliiim late jactaret odorem, 

 Laurus erat : folia baud ullis labentia ventis : 

 * Flos apprima tenax : animas et olentia Medi 



Ora fovent illo, et senibus medicantur anhelis: georg. lib. ii. 1.131. 



