event of war, and the secondary object
was the plantation of other trees for
ornament and beauty, the author, as a matter
of course, began with the oak as the tree
par excellence: not only, he said,
"because it was held in high esteem by 'that
wise and glorious people,' the Romans;
but because it carried it from all other
trees whatsoever for the building of ships
in general, and particularly for being tough,
bending well, strong, and not too heavy,
nor easily admitting water." In his
instructions for the planting, the culture,
the transplanting, and the management of
this tree, Evelyn invariably wrote like
an adept; and though sometimes historical,
classical, and poetical in his allusions
and quotations, he is in the main scientific
and practical. "To enumerate," he says,
"the incomparable uses of this tree were
needless, but so precious was the esteem
of it, that there was an express law among
the Twelve Tables concerning the very
gathering of the acorns (oak-corns), though
they should be found fallen into another
man's ground. The land and the sea do
sufficiently speak for the improvement of
this excellent material. Houses and ships,
cities and navies are built with it." And
not only in his estimation was the oak
timber to be admired for its uses, but the
bark, the acorns, the leaves, its very disease,
the gall, were each and all of utility to
mankind. "Of the gall," he says, "is
made spa-water. It is the ground and
basis of several dyes, especially of the
sadder colours. Nor must I forget ink,
composed of galls, copperas, gum-arabic,
and claret, or French wine. Of the very
moss of the oak, that which is white
composes the choicest cypress powder, which
is esteemed good for the head; but
impostors familarly vend other mosses under
this name, as they do the fungi, excellent
in hemorrhages and fluxes, for the true
agaric, to the great scandal of physic.
Young red oaken leaves, decocted in wine,
make an excellent gargle for a sore mouth;
and almost any part of this tree is
sovereign against fluxes in general, and where
astringents are proper. The dew that
impearls the leaves in May, insolated,
meteorises, and sends up a liquor which is
of admirable effect in ruptures. The liquor
issuing about between the bark, which
looks like treacle, has many sovereign
virtues ; and a water distilled from the
acorns is good against the phthisick and
stitch in the side, heals inward ulcers, and
breaks the stone; nay, the acorns
themselves, eaten fasting, kill the worms. The
leaves of oak, beaten and mingled into
honey, cure the carbuncle, to say nothing
of polypods and other excrescences; of it
innumerable remedies are composed, noble
antidotes, and syrups." And as if all
these virtues were not sufficient in the
good man's estimation with which to
endow his favourite tree, he wound up his
eulogy by stating, what he did not
expressly say he believed, though he left the
reader to infer his credence, "that it is
reported that the very shade of the tree is
so wholesome, that the sleeping or lying
under it becomes a present remedy to
paralytics!"

The elm, dear to all lovers of English
scenery and poetry, is next in Evelyn's
list. "I know," he says in his magniloquent
way, "of no tree among all the
forests, becoming the almost 'interminat
contananza' of walks and vistas, comparable
to this majestic plant. . . . The elm is,
by reason of its aspiring and tapering
growth, the least offensive to corn and
pasture grounds, to both of which and to
cattle it affords a benign shade, defence,
and agreeable ornament." It will serve no
purpose to enumerate, as Evelyn does, all
the manufacturing and commercial uses of
this tree, and the various tools, implements,
and commodities which may be made of it.
He incidentally mentions the coffin as one
of them; the coffin, which to the mournful
imagination of poor Thomas Hood in his
beautiful poem of The Elm Tree, seemed
the only manufacture for which its timber
was designed:

  And well the abounding elm may grow
     In field and hedge so rife,
   In forest, copse, and wooded park,
     And 'mid the city's strife,
   For every hour that passes by
     Shall end a human life.

Evelyn looked at things more cheerfully,
and found the elm beautiful and useful for
the living, and, like the oak, a plant in all its
parts of high medicinal virtue. "The green
leaf of the elm contused," he informed
his readers, "heals a green wound or cut,
and, boiled with the bark, consolidates
fractured bones. All the parts of this tree are
abstersive, and therefore sovereign for the
consolidating wounds, and assuage the
pains of the gout. The bark, decocted in
common water to almost the consistence
of a syrup, adding a third part of aqua
vitæ, is a most admirable remedy for ,the
ischiadica (gout in the hip), the place
being well rubbed and chafed near the
fire."