sms and starving the root, are by chance met with now
and then) of a fading flower: How much more honour then were due in
justice to those persons, who bring in things of much real benefit to
their countrey? especially trees for fruit and timber; the oak alone
(besides the shelter it afforded to our late Sovereign Charles the II^d)
having so often sav'd and protected the whole nation from invasion, and
brought it in so much wealth from foreign countries. I have been told,
there was an intention to have instituted an Order of the Royal-Oak; and
truly I should think it to become a green-ribbon (next to that of St.
George) superior to any of the romantick badges, to which abroad is paid
such veneration, deservedly to be worn by such as have signaliz'd
themselves by their conduct and courage; for the defence and
preservation of their countrey. Bespeaking my reader's pardon for this
digression, we proceed in the next to other useful exoticks.

FOOTNOTES:

{214:1} Euripides _epithai_.

{215:1} Macrob. _saturnal._ 3. c. 11.

{215:2} Solarium quod pro folo pendetur, as the pandects name the tax
paid for the shades that bear no fruit.

CHAPTER III.

_Of the Fir, Pine, Pinaster, Pitch-tree, Larsh, and Subterranean trees._

1. _Abies_, _picea_, _pinus_, _pinaster_, larsh, &c. are all of them
easily rais'd of the kernels and nuts, which may be gotten out of their
polysperm and turbinate cones, clogs, and squams, by exposing them to
the sun, or a little before the fire, or in warm-water, till they begin
to gape, and are ready to deliver themselves of their numerous burthens.

2. There are of the fir two principal species; the _picea_, or male,
which is the bigger tree; very beautiful and aspiring, and of an harder
wood, and hirsute leaf: And the silver-fir, or female. I begin with the
first: The boughs whereof are flexible and bending; the cones dependent,
long and smooth, growing from the top of the branch; and where gaping,
yet retain the seeds in their receptacles, when fresh gather'd, giving a
grateful fragrancy of the rosin: The fruit is ripe in September. But
after all, for a perfecter account of the true and genuine fir-tree,
(waving the distinction of _sapinum_, from _sapinus_, _litera sed una_
differing, as of another kind) is a noble upright tree from the ground,
smooth and even, to the eruption of the branches; as is that they call
the _sapinum_, and thence tapering to the summit of the _fusterna_: The