improve; and that by
the example and application of his Majesty's Universities, and Royal
Society, the restoration and improvement of shipping, mathematical, and
mechanical arts, the use of timber grows daily in more reputation. And
it were well if great persons might only be indulg'd to inrich, and
adorn their palaces with tapestry, damask, velvet, and Persian
furniture; whilst by some wholesome sumptuary laws, the universal excess
of those costly and luxurious moveables, were prohibited meaner men, for
divers politic considerations and reasons, which it were easie to
produce; but by a less influence than severer laws, it will be very
difficult, if not altogether impossible, to recover our selves from a
softness and vanity, which will in time not only effeminate, but undo
the nation.

6. _Cupressus_, the cypress-tree is either the Sative, or garden-tree,
the most pyramidal and beautiful; or that which is call'd the male,
(though somewhat preposterously) which bears the small cones, but is of
a more extravagant shape: Should we reason only from our common
experience, even the cypress-tree was, but within a few years past,
reputed so tender, and nice a plant, that it was cultivated with the
greatest care, and to be found only amongst the curious; whereas we see
it now, in every garden, rising to as goodly a bulk and stature, as most
which you shall find even in Italy it self; for such I remember to have
once seen in his late Majesty's gardens at Theobalds, before that
princely seat was demolish'd. I say, if we did argue from this topic,
methinks it should rather encourage our country-men to add yet to their
plantations, other foreign and useful trees, and not in the least deter
them, because many of them are not as yet become endenizon'd amongst us:
But of this I have said enough, and yet cannot but still repeat it.

7. We may read that the peach was at first accounted so tender, and
delicate a tree, as that it was believ'd to thrive only in Persia; and
even in the days of Galen, it grew no nearer than Egypt, of all the
Roman provinces, but was not seen in the city, till about thirty years
before Pliny's time; whereas, there is now hardly a more common, and
universal in Europe: Thus likewise, the _Avellana_ from Pontus in Asia;
thence into Greece, and so Italy, to the city of Abellino in Campania.

_Una tantum litera immutata, Avellina dici, quae prius Abellina._

I might affirm the same of our Damasco plum, quinc