[Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) by John Evelyn]@TWC D-Link book
Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2)

CHAPTER III
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Pliny speaks of one root, which took up an entire acre of ground, and Theophrastus describes the _Lycean Platanus_ to have spread an hundred foot; if so, the argument may hold good for their growth after the tree is come to its period.

They made cups of the roots of oaks heretofore, and such a curiosity Athenaeus tells us was carv'd by Thericleus himself; and there is a way so to tinge oak after long burying and soaking in water, (which gives it a wonderful politure) as that it has frequently been taken for a course ebony: Hence even by floating, comes the Bohemian oak, Polish, and other northern timber, to be of such excellent use for some parts of shipping: But the blackness which we find in oaks, that have long lain under ground, (and may be call'd subterranean timber) proceeds from some vitriolic juice of the bed in which they lie, which makes it very weighty; but (as the excellent naturalist and learned physician Dr.Sloane observes) it dries, splits, and becomes light, and much impairs.
15.

There is not in nature a thing more obnoxious to deceit, than the buying of trees standing, upon the reputation of their appearance to the eye, unless the chapman be extraordinarily judicious; so various are their hidden and conceal'd infirmities, till they be fell'd and sawn out: So as if to any thing applicable, certainly there is nothing which does more perfectly confirm it, than the most flourishing out-side of trees, _fronti nulla fides_.

A timber-tree is a merchant-adventurer, you shall never know what he is worth till he be dead.
16.

Oaks are in some places (where the soil is especially qualified) ready to be cut for cops in fourteen years and sooner; I compute from the first semination; though it be told as an instance of high encouragement (and as indeed it merits) that a lady in Northamptonshire sowed acorns, and liv'd to cut the trees produc'd from them, twice in two and twenty years; and both as well grown as most are in sixteen or eighteen.


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