incredible, and
therefore I stand the longer upon them; nevertheless omitting to speak
particularly of such things as happen amongst us, and rather seeking to
confirm the same by the like in other countries, I will deliver a few more
examples, whereby the truth hereof shall so much the better appear. For in
the midst of a stone not long since found at Chius, upon the breaking up
thereof, there was seen _Caput panisci_ enclosed therein, very perfectly
formed, as the beholders do remember. How come the grains of gold to be so
fast enclosed in the stones that are and have been found in the Spanish
Baetis? But this is most marvellous, that a most delectable and sweet oil,
comparable to the finest balm, or oil of spike in smell, was found
naturally enclosed in a stone, which could not otherwise be broken but
with a smith's hammer.

Finally, I myself have seen stones opened, and within them the substances
of corrupted worms like unto adders (but far shorter), whose crests and
wrinkles of body appeared also therein as if they had been engraved in the
stones by art and industry of man. Wherefore to affirm that as well living
creatures as precious stones, gold, etc., are now and then found in our
quarries, shall not hereafter be a thing so incredible as many talking
philosophers, void of all experience, do affirm and wilfully maintain
against such as hold the contrary.

CHAPTER XIX.

OF WOODS AND MARSHES.

[1577, Book II., Chapter 16; 1587, Book II., Chapter 22.]

It should seem by ancient records, and the testimony of sundry authors,
that the whole countries of Lhoegres and Cambria, now England and Wales,
have sometimes been very well replenished with great woods and groves,
although at this time the said commodity be not a little decayed in both,
and in such wise that a man shall oft ride ten or twenty miles in each of
them and find very little, or rather none at all, except it be near unto
towns, gentlemen's houses, and villages, where the inhabitants have
planted a few elms, oaks, hazels, or ashes about their dwellings, for
their defence from the rough winds and keeping of the stormy weather from
annoyance of the same. This scarcity at the first grew (as it is thought)
either by the industry of man, for maintenance of tillage (as we
understand the like to be done of late by the Spaniards in the West
Indies, where they fired whole woods of very great compass, thereby to
come by ground whereon to sow their grains