OF FOREST-TREES.

; SIS

and that not only (though chiefly) for the encouragement of planters, and chap. ii'i>preservers of one of the most excellent and necefsary materials in theworld for the benefit of man, but to evince the continued vigour of na-ture, and to reproach the want of industry in this age of ours ; and (thatwe may return to the argument of this large chapter) to afsert the pro-cerity and stature of trees from their very great antiquity : For certainly,if that be true, which is by divers affirmed concerning the Quercetum ofMamre, (where the Patriarch entertained his angelic guests) recorded byEusebius to have continued tiff the time of Constantine the Great , weare not too prejudicately to censure what has been produced for theproofs of their antiquity; nor for my part do I much question the au-thorities. But let this suffice ; what has been produced, being not onlyan historical speculation of encouragement and use, but such as was per-tinent to the subject under consideration, as well as what I am about toadd concerning the texture and similar parts of the body of trees, whichmay also hold in shrubs, and other ligneous plants, because it is both acurious and rational account of their anatomization, and worthy of thesagacious inquiry of that learned person, the late Dr. Goddard, as I findit entered amongst other of those precious collections of this illustrioussociety.

The trunk or bough of a tree being cut transversely plain and smooth,showeth several circles or rings more or lefs orbicular, according to theexternal figure, in some parallel proportion, one without the other, fromthe centre of the wood to the inside of the bark, dividing the wffiole intoso many circular spaces. These rings are more large, grofs, and distinct'in colour and substance in some kind of trees, generally in such as growto a great bulk in a short time, as Fir, Ash, &c. smaller or lefs distinctin those that either not at all, or in a longer time grow great; asQuince , Holly, Box, Lignum Vitas, Ebony, and the like sad-coloured andhard-woods; so that by the largenefs or smallnefs of the rings, the quick-nefs or slownefs of the growth of any tree may, perhaps, at certainty beestimated.

The spaces are manifestly broader on the one side than on the other,especially the more outer, to a double proportion, or more; the innerbeing near an equality.

Volume II. E e