s proceed from any pure accidental, but real cause;
_flatus_, venemous liquor, and infections: Which some, even of the
minutest animals, are provided with instruments to pierce the very solid
substances of trees and plants, and infuse their pestiferous taint;
where likewise they leave their eggs, boaring those nestling places with
a certain _terebra_, where we find those innumerable perforations which
we call worm-eaten; the wider _latebrae_ are made by _erucae_,
caterpillars, ants, and bigger insects, raising morbid tumors and
excrescences, and preying upon the fruit, as well as on the leaves, buds
and flowers, so soon as their eggs are hatch'd, when they creep out of
their little caverns in armies, like the Egyptian locusts, invading all
that's green, and tender rudiments first, and then attacking the
tougher and solider parts of vegetables: To those learned persons above,
we may not forget the late worthy and pious Mr. Ray, where in the second
part of his treatise, of the _Wisdom of God in the Creation_, we have a
brief, but ingenious account of what concerns this subject, together
with what is added about spontaneous productions of these despicable
animals, to which I refer the curious.

Trees (especially fruit-bearers) are infested with the measels, by being
burned and scorched with the sun in great droughts: To this commonly
succeeds lousiness, which is cur'd by boring an hole into the principal
root, and pouring in a quantity of brandy, stopping the orifice up with
a pin of the same wood.

Crooked trees are reform'd by taking off or topping the praeponderers,
whilst charg'd with leaves, or woody and hanging counterpoises.

Excorticated and bark-bared trees, may be preserved by nourishing up a
shoot from the foot, or below the stripped place, and inserting it into
a slit above the wounded part; to be done in the Spring, and secur'd
from air, as you treat a graff: This I have out of the very industrious
Mr. Cook, p. 48. But Dr. Merret brought us in this relation to the Royal
Society, that making a square section of the rinds of ash, and sycomore
(March 1664,) whereof three sides were cut, and one not, the success
was, that the whole bark did unite, being bound with pack-thread,
leaving only a scar: But being separated intirely from the tree, namely
several parts of the bark, and at various depths, leaving on some part
of the bark, others cut to the very wood it self, being tied on as the
former, a new rind succee