At a meeting of the Council of the Royal Society in November 1662, Evelyn followed up his recent _Sylva_ by suggesting a discourse 'concerning planting his Majesty's Forest of Deane with oake, now so much exhausted, of ye choicest ship-timber in the world.' This was before the days of steam or even of macadamized roads, when we had to grow our own supplies of food and Navy timber.

True, oak for wainscoting and the like had long been imported from the Continent; but if we had been anything like dependent on foreign oak, the Dutch War which shortly afterwards broke out would probably have cut off the same entirely from reaching our ports.
It is unnecessary to say much about this charming classic of Forestry, of whose various excellences the reader can herein judge for himself.
Gracefully written in nervous English and in a cultured style, ornately embellished according to the then prevailing custom by apt quotations from the Latin poets, it contains an enormous amount of information in the shape of legends and of facts ascertained by travel, of observation, and of experience.

No man of his time could possibly have been better qualified than Evelyn for undertaking the special duty laid upon him; and he carried out his task in a brilliant manner.

_Sylva_ soon ran into several editions.

The fourth edition appeared in the year of his death (1706) and a fifth in 1729.