ubs; the straight and smooth for
axle-trees, and the very roots for curiously dappled works, scarce has
any superior for kerbs of coppers, featheridge, and weather-boards, (but
it does not without difficulty, admit the nail without boreing)
chopping-blocks, blocks for the hat-maker, trunks, and boxes to be
covered with leather; coffins, for dressers and shovel-board-tables of
great length, and a lustrous colour if rightly seasoned; also for the
carver, by reason of the tenor of the grain, and toughness which fits it
for all those curious works of frutages, foliage, shields, statues, and
most of the ornaments appertaining to the orders of architecture, and
for not being much subject to warping; I find that of old they used it
even for hinges and hooks of doors; but then, that part of the plank
which grew towards the top of the tree, was in work to be always
reversed; and for that it is not so subject to rift; Vitruvius commends
it both for tenons and mortaises: But besides these, and sundry other
employments, it makes also the second sort of charcoal; and finally,
(which I must not omit) the use of the very leaves of this tree,
especially of the female, is not to be despis'd; for being suffered to
dry in the sun upon the branches, and the spray strip'd off about the
decrease in August (as also where the suckers and stolones are
super-numerary, and hinder the thriving of their nurses) they will prove
a great relief to cattel in winter, and scorching summers, when hay and
fodder is dear they will eat them before oats, and thrive exceedingly
well with them; remember only to lay your boughs up in some dry and
sweet corner of your barn: It was for this the poet prais'd them, and
the epithet was advis'd,

fruitful in leaves the elm.{74:1}

In some parts of Herefordshire they gather them in sacks for their
swine, and other cattel, according to this husbandry. But I hear an ill
report of them for bees, that surfeiting of the blooming seeds, they are
obnoxious to the lask, at their first going abroad in spring, which
endangers whole stocks, if remedies be not timely adhibited; therefore
'tis said in great elm countries they do not thrive; but the truth of
which I am yet to learn. The green leaf of the elms contused, heals a
green wound or cut, and boiled with the bark, consolidates fractur'd
bones. All the parts of this tree are abstersive, and therefore
sovereign for the consolidating wounds; and asswage the pains of the
g