yrians made all their vessels of it; and indeed the Romans
prais'd it, pitch'd with Arabian pitch: And so frequent was this tree
about those parts of Assyria (where the Ark is conjectur'd to have been
built) that those vast Armada's, which Alexander the Great caus'd to be
equipp'd and set out from Babylon, consisted only of cypress, as we
learn out of Arrian in _Alex._ l. 7. and Strabo l. 16. Plutar. _Sympos._
l. 1, _prob._ 2. Vegetius l. 14. c. 34, &c. Paulus Colomesius (in his
+keimelia+ _literaria_ cap. 24.) perstringes the most learned Is.
Vossius, that in his _vindiciae pro LXX. interp._ he affirms cypress not
fit for ships, as being none of the +tetragonoi+: But besides what we
have produced, Fuller, Bochartus, &c. Lilius Gyraldus (_Lib. de navig._
c. 4.) and divers others sufficiently evince it, and that the vessel
built by Trajan was of that material, lasting uncorrupt near 1400 years,
when it was afterwards found in a certain lake; if it were not rather
(as I suspect) that which AEneas Silvius reports to have been discovered
in his time, lying under water in the Numidian Lake, crusted over with
a certain ferruginous mixture of earth and scales, as if it had been of
iron; but (as we have elsewhere noted) it was pronounced to be _larix_,
and not cypress, employ'd by Tiberius: Finally (not to forget even the
very chips of this precious wood, which give that flavour to muscadines,
and other rich wines) I commend it for the improvement of the air, and a
specific for the lungs, as sending forth most sweet, and aromatick
emissions, whenever it is either clipp'd, or handled, and the chips or
cones, being burnt, extinguish moths, and expels the gnats and flies,
&c. not omitting the gum which it yields, not much inferior to the
terebinthine or lentise.

We have often mention'd the virtue of these odoriferous woods, for the
improvement of the air; upon which I take occasion here to add, what I
have (some years since) already{277:1} publish'd, concerning the
melioration of it, in, and about this great and populous city,
accidentally obnoxious to the effects of those nauseous vapours,
exhaling from those many unclean places, and tainting that dismal cloud
of sulphurous (if not arsenical) smoke, which we uncessantly breathe in.
I know the late terrible conflagration, by the care and industry of the
magistrate, in causing so many kennels, sinks, gutters, lay-stalls and
other nuisances (receptacles of a stagnant filth) to be re