t ou traite de la baguet divinitoire,
&c._ But concerning the exploration, and superstitious original, see Sir
Thomas Brown, _Vulg. Err._ cap. xxiv. sect. 17. and the commentators
upon 4. Hosea. 12.

CHAPTER XVII.

_Of the Birch._

1. The birch [_betula_, in British _bedw_, doubtless a proper indigene
of England, (whence some derive the name of Barkshire) though Pliny
calls it a Gaulish tree] is altogether produc'd of roots or suckers,
(though it sheds a kind of _samera_ about the Spring) which being
planted at four or five foot interval, in small twigs, will suddenly
rise to trees; provided they affect the ground, which cannot well be too
barren, or spongy; for it will thrive both in the dry, and the wet,
sand, and stony, marshes, and bogs; the water-galls, and uliginous parts
of forests that hardly bear any grass, do many times spontaneously
produce it in abundance, whether the place be high, or low, and nothing
comes amiss to it. Plant the small twigs, or suckers having roots, and
after the first year, cut them within an inch of the surface; this will
cause them to sprout in strong and lusty tufts, fit for copp'ce, and
spring-woods; or, by reducing them to one stem, render them in a very
few years fit for the turner. For

2. Though birch be of all other the worst of timber, yet has it its
various uses, as for the husbandman's ox-yoaks; also for hoops, small
screws, paniers, brooms, wands, bavin-bands, and wythes for fagots; and
claims a memory for arrows, bolts, shafts, (our old English artillery;)
also for dishes, bowls, ladles, and other domestic utensils, in the good
old days of more simplicity, yet of better and truer hospitality. In
New-England our Northern Americans make canoos, boxes, buckets, kettles,
dishes, which they sow, and joyn very curiously with thread made of
cedar-roots, and divers other domestical utensils, as baskets, baggs,
with this tree, whereof they have a blacker kind; and out of a certain
excrescence from the bole, a _fungus_, which being boil'd, beaten, and
dry'd in an oven, makes excellent spunck or touch-wood, and balls to
play withal; and being reduc'd to powder, astringent, is an infallible
remedy in the hoemerhoids. They make also not only this small ware, but
even small-craft, pinnaces of birch, ribbing them with white cedar, and
covering them with large flakes of birch-bark, sow them with thread of
spruse-roots, and pitch them, as it seems we did even here in Britain,
as