thinks we should not despair. We have said where they grow plentifully
in France; but by Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ l. 16. c. 8. it should seem they
were since transplanted thither; for he affirms there were none either
there, or in Italy, in his time: But I exceedingly wonder that Carolus
Stephanus, and Cursius, should write so peremptorily, that there were
none in Italy; where I my self have travell'd through vast woods of them
about Pisa, Aquin, and in divers tracts between Rome, and the kingdom of
Naples, and in France. The Spanish cork is a species of the _enzina_,
differing chiefly in the leaf, which is not so prickly; and in the bark,
which is frequently four or five inches thick: The manner of
decortication thereof is once in two or three years, to strip it in a
dry season; otherwise, the intercutaneous moisture endangers the tree,
and therefore a rainy season is very pernicious; when the bark is off,
they unwarp it before the fire, and press it even, and that with weights
upon the convex part, and so it continues, being cold.

2. The uses of cork is well known amongst us, both at sea and land, for
its resisting both water and air: The fisher-men who deal in nets, and
all who deal with liquors, cannot be without it: Ancient persons prefer
it before leather for the soles of their shooes, being light, dry, and
resisting moisture, whence the Germans name it _Pantoffel-holts_
(slipper-wood) perhaps from the Greek +Pantos+ & +phellos+; for I find
it first applied to that purpose by the Grecian ladies, whence they were
call'd light-footed; I know not whether the epithet do still belong to
that sex; but from them it's likely the Venetian dames took it up for
their monstrous _choppines_; affecting, or usurping an artificial
eminency above men, which nature has denied them. Of one of the sorts of
cork are made pretty cups, and other vessels, esteem'd good to drink out
of for hectical persons: The Egyptians made their coffins of it, which
being lin'd with a resinous composition, preserved their dead incorrupt:
The poor people in Spain, lay broad planks of it by their beds-side, to
tread on (as great persons use Turky and Persian carpets) to defend them
from the floor, and sometimes they line or wainscot the walls, and
inside of their houses built of stone, with this bark, which renders
them very warm, and corrects the moisture of the air: Also they employ
it for bee-hives, and to double the insides of their _contemplores_, and
le