OF FOREST-TREES. 



315 



Lastly, The very chips or shavings of deal boards are of other use than CH. XXII. 

 to kindle fires alone : Thomas Bartholinus, in his Medicina Danorum, ^-■^'Y"^ 

 Dissert, vii. where he disclaims the use of hops in beer as pernicious and 

 malignant, and from several instances how apt it is to produce and usher 

 in infections, nay plagues, &:c. would substitute in its place the shavings 

 of deal boards, to give a grateful odour to the drink ; and how sovereign 

 those resinous woods, the tops of Fir and Pines, are against the scorbut, 

 gravel in the kidneys, &c. we generally find. It is in the same chapter 

 that he commends also Wormwood, Marriibium, Chamelgeagnum, Sage, 

 Tamarisk, and almost any thing rather than hops. The bark of the 

 Pine heals ulcers ; "and the inner rind cut small, contused, and 

 boiled in store of water, is an excellent remedy for burns and scalds, 

 washing- the sore with the decoction, and applying the softened bark. — 

 It is also sovereign against frozen and benumbed limbs. The distilled 

 water of the green cones takes away the wrinkles of the face ; cloths 

 dipped therein, and laid upon the skin, become a cosmetic not to be 

 despised. The Pine or Picea, buried in the earth, never decays. From 

 the latter transudes a very bright and pellucid gum ; hence we have like- 

 wise resin. Also of the Pine are made boxes and barrels for dry goods ; 

 and it is cloven into shingles (scandulse) for the covering of houses 

 in some places. Hoops for wine-vessels, especially of the flexible wild 

 Pine, are made of it ; not to forget the kernels, (this tree being always 

 furnished with cones, some ripe, others green,) of such admirable use in 

 emulsions ; and for tooth -pickers, even the very leaves are commended. 

 In sum, they are plantations which exceedingly improve the air by their 

 odoriferous and balsamic emissions, and for ornament create a perpetual 

 spring where they are plentifully propagated. And if it could be proved 

 that the Almug-trees,* recorded 1 Reg. x. 12. (whereof pillars for that • where 



111 111 Ti Lyiyi (viz. 



famous temple and the roA'al palace, harps, and psalteries, &c. were made,) 3 Kings x. 



12.) calls it 



were of this sort of wood, as some doubt not to assert, we should esteem dm^.r.-,™ 

 it at another rate ; yet we know Josephus affirms they were a kind of others liffiin 

 Pine-tree, though somewhat resembling the Fig-tree wood to appearance, 

 as of a most lustrous candor. In 2 Chron. ii. 8. there is mention of 

 Almug-trees growing in Lebanon ; and if so, methinks it should rather 

 be, as Buxtorf thinks, a kind of Cedar ; (yet we find Fir also in the same 

 period ;) for we have seen a whiter sort of it, even very white as well as 

 red ; though some affirm it to be but the sap of it, as our cabinet-makers 

 call it : I say there were both Fir and Pine-trees growing upon those 



3 A 2 



