min can attaque them, they will keep
marvellously plump the whole year about, and may easily be blanched: In
Spain they use to strew the gratings of old and hard nuts (first peel'd)
into their tarts and other meats. For the oyl, one bushel of nuts will
yield fifteen pounds of peel'd and clear kernels, and that half as much
oyl, which the sooner 'tis drawn, is the more in quantity, though the
dryer the nut, the better in quality; the lees, or marc of the
pressing, is excellent to fatten hogs with. After the nuts are beaten
down, the leaves would be sweep'd into heaps, and carried away, because
their extreme bitterness impairs the ground, and as I am assured,
prejudices the trees: The green husks boiled, make a good colour to dye
a dark yellow, without any mixture; and the distillation of its leaves
with honey and urine, makes hair spring on baldheads: Besides its use in
the famous Salernitan antidote; if the kernel a little masticated, be
applied to the biting of a suspected mad-dog, and when it has lain three
hours, be cast to poultrey, they will die if they eat of it. In Italy,
when a countreyman finds any pain in his side, he drinks a pint of the
fresh oyl of this nut, and finds immediate ease: And more famous is the
wonderful cure, which the _fungus_ substance separating the lobs of the
kernel, pulveriz'd and drank in wine, in a moderate quantity, did
recover the English army in Ireland of a dyssentary, when no other
remedy could prevail: The same also in pleurisies, &c. The juice of the
outward rind of the nut, makes an excellent gargle for a sore-throat:
The kernel being rubb'd upon any crack or chink of a leaking or crazy
vessel, stops it better than either clay, pitch, or wax: In France they
eat them blanch'd and fresh, with wine and salt, having first cut them
out of the shells before they are hardned, with a short broad
brass-knife, because iron rusts, and these they call _cernois_, from
their manner of scooping them out. Lastly, of the _fungus_ emerging from
the trunk of an old tree, (and indeed some others) is made touch-wood,
artificially prepar'd in a _lixivium_ or lye, dried, and beaten flat,
and then boil'd with salt-peter, to render it apter to kindle. The tree
wounded in the Spring, yields a liquor, which makes an artificial wine.
See Birch, cap. XVII. Of other species, see Mr. Ray's _Dendrolog._ Tom.
III. p. 5, 6.

FOOTNOTES:

{101:1} See Servius introduc'd discoursing of this and other nuts,
_Macr