Chap. 77.] METHODS OF OBTAINING rillE PEOM WOOD. 421 
proved thereby. Its colour is imitated remarkably well with 
the walnut and the wild pear, which have its peculiar tint 
imparted to them by being boiled in colouring liquid. The 
wood of all the trees of which we have here made mention is 
firm and compact. I^ext after them comes the cornel, although 
it can hardly be looked upon as timber, in consequence of its 
remarkable slimness ; the wood of it, in fact, is used for hardly 
any other purpose than the spokes of wheels, or else for mak- 
ing wedges for splitting wood, and pins or bolts, which have 
all the hardness of those of iron. Eesides these, there are 
the holm-oak, the wild and the cultivated olive, the chesnut, 
the yoke-elm, and the poplar. This last is mottled simi- 
larly to the maple, and would be used for joiners* work if wood 
could be good for anything when the branches are so often 
lopped : that acting upon the tree as a sort of castration, and 
depriving it of its strength. In addition to these facts, most of 
these trees, but the robur more particularly, are so extremely 
hard, that it is quite impossible to bore the wood till it has 
been soaked in water ; and even then, a nail once driven home 
cannot be drawn out again. On the other hand, a nail has no^^ 
hold in cedar. The wood of the lime is the softest of all, and, 
as it would appear, the hottest by nature ; a proof of this, they 
say, is the fact that it will turn the edge of the adze sooner 
than any other wood.^^ In the number, also, of the trees that 
are hot by nature, are the mulberry, the laurel, the iv}^, and 
all those woods from which fire is kindled by attrition. 
CHAP. 77. — METHODS OF OBTAINING FIEE FKOM WOOD. 
This is a method^^ which has been employed by the outposts 
of armies, and by shepherds^ on occasions when there has not 
been a stone at hand to strike fire with. Two pieces of wood 
are rubbed briskly together, and the friction soon sets them on 
fire ; which is caught on dry and inflammable substances, fun- 
guses and leaves being found to ignite the most readily. There 
is nothing superior to the wood of the ivy for rubbing against, 
26 This is not the case ; a nail has a firm hold in all resinous woods. 
^"^ This is evidently a puerile absurdity : but it is borrowed from Theo- 
phrastus, Hist. Plant. B. v. c. 4. 
2s The savages of North America, and, indeed, of all part's of the globe, 
seem to have been acquainted with this method of kindling fire from the 
very earliest times. 
