206 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. first who recommended this great artist to his Majesty Charles 1 1. 



-""'^-y^**^ I mention it on this occasion with much satisfaction. With the twigs, 

 they make baskets and cradles, and of the smoother side of the bark, 

 tablets for writing ; for the ancient Philyra is but our Tilia, of which 

 Hunting affirms he saw a book made of the inward bark, written about 

 a thousand years since. Such another was brought to the Count of 

 St. Amant, Governor of Arras, 1662, for which there were given eight 

 thousand ducats by the Emperor ; it contained a work of Cicero, 

 De ordinanda Republica, et de inveniendu' orationum eccordiis ; a piece 

 inestimable, but never published, and nov/ in the library at Vienna, after 

 it had formerly been the greatest rarity in that of the late Cardinal 

 Mazarine. Other papyraceous trees are mentioned by West- Indian 

 travellers, especially in Hispaniola, Java, &c. whose inward bark not 

 only exceeds our largest paper for breadth and length, and may 

 be written on both sides, but is comparable to our best vellum. — 

 Bellonius says, That the Grecians made bottles of the Tilia, which they 

 finely resined within-side. It makes pumps for ships, also lattices for 

 windows : Shoemakers use dressers of the plank to cut leather on, as 

 not so hard as to turn the edges of their knives ; and even the coarsest 

 membrane, or slivers of the tree growing betwixt the bark and the main 

 body, they now twist into bass ropes ; besides, the truncheons make 

 a far better coal for gunpowder than those of Alder itself: Scriblets for 

 painters' first draughts are also made of its coals : and its extraordinary 

 candour and lightness, has dignified it above all the woods of our forest, 

 in the hands of the Right Honourable the White-staff Officers of his 

 Majesty's Imperial Court. The royal plantations of these trees in the 

 parks of Hampton-Court and St. James's, will sufficiently instruct any 

 man how these (and indeed all others which stand single) are to be 

 governed and defended from the injuries of beasts, and sometimes more 

 unreasonable creatures, till they are able to protect themselves. — 

 In Holland, where the very highways are adorned with them, they 

 frequently clap three or four deal-boards, in manner of a close trunk, 

 about them, but it is not so well ; because it keeps out the air, which 

 should have free access and intercourse to the bole, and by no means 

 be excluded from flowing freely about them, or indeed any other trees, 0 

 provided they are secured from cattle, and the violence of impetuous 

 winds, &c. as his Majesty's are, without those close coffins in which the 



