ng with a man's
hand who came warm out of the bath, was accounted better than any cloth,
as Pliny reports. Some there be who contend, this citern was a part near
the root of the cedar, which, as they describe it, is very oriental and
odoriferous; but most of the learned favour the citron, and that it grew
not far from our Tangier, about the foot of Mount Atlas, whence haply
some industrious person might procure of it from the Moors; and I did
not forget to put his then Excellency my Lord H. Howard (since his Grace
the Duke of Norfolk) in mind of it; who I hoped might have opportunities
of satisfying our curiosity, that by comparing it with those elegant
woods, which both our own countries, and the Indies furnish, we might
pronounce something in the controversie: But his not going so far into
the countrey, and the disorder which happen'd at his being there, quite
frustrated this expectation: Here I think good to add, what honest
Palissy philosophises after his plain manner, about the reason of those
pretty undulations and chamfers, which we so frequently find in divers
woods, which he takes to be the descent, as well as ascent of moisture:
For what else (says he) becomes of that water which we often encounter
in the cavities, when many branches divaricate, and spread themselves at
the tops of great trees (especially pollards) unless (according to its
natural appetite) it sink into the very body of the stem through the
pores? For example, in the walnut, you shall find, when 'tis old, that
the wood is admirably figur'd, and, as it were, marbl'd, and therefore
much more esteem'd by the joyners, cabinet-makers, and _ouvrages de
marqueterie_, in-layers, &c. than the young, which is paler of colour,
and without any notable grain, as they call it. For the rain distilling
along the branches, when many of them break out into clusters from the
stem, sinks in, and is the cause of these marks; since we find it
exceedingly full of pores: Do but plane off a thin chip, or sliver from
one of these old trees, and interposing it 'twixt your eye and the
light, you shall observe it to be full of innumerable holes (much more
perspicuous and ample, by the application of a good{119:1} microscope.)
But above all, notable for these extravagant damaskings and characters,
is the maple; and 'tis notorious, that this tree is very full of
branches from the root to its very summit, by reason that it produces no
considerable fruit: These arms being frequ