496 
In setting the nuts, Dr. Hunter recommends drills to be made at one foot asunder, and two 
inches and a half deep, into which put the nuts four inches apart. Mr. Evelyn advises some furze 
to be chopped among them, to preserve them from vermin. 
The size to which the Walnut will attain may be judged of from what Scamozzi the architect 
says, as Mr. Evelyn reports; that he saw a table of Walnut tree in Lorrain, all of one piece, which 
was twenty-five feet in breadth, of competent length and thickness. 
Genus 23. Laurus. Laurel. Class X* Euneandria. 
Order I. Monogynia. 
Species 1. Benjamin Tree. (Laurus Benzoin.) 
This rises to the height of ten or twelve feet, dividing into many branches. Leaves pear three 
inches long, and an inch and half broad, smooth on their upper surface, but with many transverse 
veins on their under side. Flowers of a white herbaceous colour, with six stamina in each. 
Native of Virginia; whence it was sent by Banister to Compton Bishop of London, and culti¬ 
vated in his garden at Fulham in 1688, by Mr. George London.* 
This tree has been confounded with the true Benzoin tree, Sty rax Benzoin. 
Species 2, Sassafras Tree. (Laurus Sassafras.) 
The Sassafras tree is commonly rather a shrub, seldom rising more than eight or ten feet high. 
The leaves are of different shapes and sizes; some oval and entire, about four inches long and three 
broad; others are deeply divided into three lobes; these are six inches long, and as much in breadth 
from the extremity of the two outside lobes; they are placed alternately on pretty long foot-stalks, 
and are of a lucid green; they fall off early in the autumn, and in the spring, soon after the leaves 
begin to come out, the flowers appear just below them, on slender peduncles, each sustaining three 
or four small, yellowish flowers, which have five oval, concave petals, and eight stamina in the male 
flowers, which are upon different plants from the bisexual flowers. These are succeeded by an oval 
berry, which, when ripe, is blue. 
Catesby describes the Sassafras as a small tree, the trunk usually not a foot thick. The leaves 
divided into three lobes by very deep incisures. In March bunches of small five-petalled flowers 
coming forth, succeeded by berries, in size and shape not unlike those of the Bay-tree, hanging on 
red foot-stalks, with a red calyx, resembling that of an acorn: they are at first green, and when 
ripe blue. 
This tree is described at full length in the second volume of Nova Acta Nat. Cur. by Trew, 
who has there given an ample account of its Natural History. 
The wood of this tree, which is of a light and spongy texture, has a fragrant smell, and a 
sweetish aromatic taste, and with the bark, is much used in the Materia Medica. It gives out its 
virtues both to spirit and water, but most readily to the former.T 
Native of almost all America, commonly in a sandy soil, never in swamps. It was also observed 
by Loureiro in the north of Cochinchina nearTonquin. It has withstood the cold of several winters 
* Raii Hist, and Ilort. Kew. 
+ For its employment in Medicine, vide our History of the Medical Virtues of Plants. 
