[Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) by John Evelyn]@TWC D-Link book
Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2)

CHAPTER X
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The timber of the sort is useful for the joyner, and of which I have seen a room curiously wainscotted: Also for the engraver of wood-cuts, bows, pullys, skrews, mill-spindles and other; goads to drive oxen with, &c.

pistol and gun-stocks, and for most that the wild-pear-tree, serves; and being of a very delicate grain for the turner, and divers curiosities, and looks beautifully, and is almost everlasting, being rubb'd over with oyl of linseed, well boil'd, it may be made to counterfeit ebony, or almost any Indian wood, colour'd according to art: Also it is taken to build with, yielding beams of considerable substance: The shade is beautiful for walks, and the fruit not unpleasant, especially the second kind, of which with new wine and honey, they make a _conditum_ of admirable effect to corroborate the stomach; and the fruit alone is good in dysentery's and lasks.

The water distill'd from the stalks of the flowers and leaves in M.B.and twice rectified upon fresh matter, is incomparable for consumptive and tabid bodies, taking an ounce daily at several times: Likewise it cures the green-sickness in virgins, and is prevalent in all fluxes; distill'd warm into the ears it abates the pain: The wood or bark contus'd, and applied to any green wound, heals it; and the powder thereof drank in oyl olive, consolidates inward ruptures: Lastly, the salt of the wood taken in decoction of _althaea_ to three grains, is an incomparable remedy to break, and expel gravel.

The service gives the husbandman an early presage of the approaching Spring, by extending his adorned buds for a peculiar entertainment, and dares peep out in the severest Winters.
3.

That I rank this amongst the forest berry-bearing trees, (frequent in the hedges, and growing wild in Herefordshire, and many places; for I speak not here of our orchard-cherries, said to have been brought into Kent out of Flanders by Hen.


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