9. To every gallon of birch-water put a quart of honey, well stirr’d together; then boil it almost an hour with a few cloves, and a little limon-peel, keeping it well scumm’d: When it is sufficiently boil’d, and become cold, add to it three or four spoonfuls of good ale to make it work (which it will do like new ale) and when the yest begins to settle, bottle it up as you do other winy liquors. It will in a competent time become a most brisk and spiritous drink, which (besides the former virtues) is a very powerful opener, and doing wonders for cure of the phthysick: This wine may (if you please) be made as successfully with sugar, instead of honey 1 lb. to each gallon of water; or you may dulcifie it with raisins, and compose a raisin-wine of it. I know not whether the quantity of the sweet ingredients might not be somewhat reduc’d, and the operation improv’d: But I give it as receiv’d. The author of the Vinetum Brit. boils it but to a quarter or half an hour, then setting it a cooling, adds a very little yest to ferment and purge it; and so barrels it with a small proportion of cinamon and mace bruis’d, about half an ounce of both to ten gallons, close stopp’d, and to be bottled a month after. Care must be taken to set the bottles in a very cool place, to preserve them from flying; and the wine is rather for present drinking, than of long duration, unless the refrigeratorie be extraordinarily cold. The very smell of the first springing leaves of this tree, wonderfully recreates and exhilerates the spirits.
10. But besides these, beech, alder, ash, sycomor, elder, &c. would be attempted for liquors: Thus crabs, and even our very brambles may possibly yield us medical and useful wines. The poplar was heretofore esteem’d more physical than the betula. The sap of the oak, juice, or decoction of the inner bark, cures the fashions, or farcy, a virulent and dangerous infirmity in horses, and which (like cancers) were reputed incurable by any other topic, than some actual, or potential cautery: But, what is more noble, a dear friend of mine assur’d me, that a countrey neighbour of his (at least fourscore years of age) who had lain sick of a bloody strangury (which by cruel torments reduc’d him to the very article of death) was, under God, recover’d to perfect, and almost miraculous health and strength (so as to be able to fall stoutly to his labour) by one sole draught of beer, wherein was the decoction of the internal bark of the oak-tree; and I have seen a composition of an admirable sudorific, and diuretic for all affections of the liver, out of the like of the elm, which might yet be drunk daily, as our coffee is, and with no less delight: But quacking is not my trade; I speak only here as a plain husband-man, and a simple forester, out of the limits whereof, I hope I have not unpardonably transgressed: Pan was a physician, and he (you know) was president of the woods. But I proceed to the alder.
Primum cana salix madefacto vimine, parvam
Texitur in puppim, cæsoque induta juvenco,
Vectoris patiens, tumidum super emicat amnem.
Sic Venetus stagnante Pado, fusoque Britannus
Navigat oceano.......
[142:2] See Philos. Transact. Vol. 9. num. 105. p. 93.
[144:1] Dr. Stubb. See the tractate intitled, Aditus novus ad occultas sympathiæ & antipathiæ causas inveniendas, per principia philosophiæ naturalis, & fermentorum artificiosâ anatomiâ hausta, patefactas, à Silvestro Rattray, M.D. Glasquensi, 1658. p. 55.
[148:1] Mr. Oldenburg.
[152:1] De Lithiasi, c. 8. n. 24, 25, &c.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Of the Alder.
1. Alnus, the alder, (both conifera and jülifera) is of all other the most faithful lover of watery and boggy places, and those most despis’d weeping parts, or water-galls of forests; ............. crassisque paludibus alni; for in better and dryer ground they attract the moisture from it, and injure it. They are propagated of trunchions, and will come of seeds (for so they raise them in Flanders, and make wonderful profit of the plantations) like the poplar; or of roots, (which I prefer) the trunchions being set as big as the small of ones leg, and in length about two foot; whereof one would be plunged in the mud. This profound fixing of aquatick-trees being to preserve them steddy, and from the concussions of the winds, and violence of waters, in their liquid and slippery foundations. They may be placed at four or five foot distance, and when they have struck root, you may cut them, which will cause them to spring in clumps, and to shoot out into many useful poles. But if you plant smaller sets, cut them not till they are arriv’d to some competent bigness, and that in a proper season: Which is, for all the aquaticks and soft woods, not till Winter be well advanc’d, in regard of their pithy substance. Therefore, such as you shall have occasion to make use of before that period, ought to be well grown, and fell’d with the earliest, and in the first quarter of the increasing moon, that so the successive shoot receive no prejudice: Some, before they fell, disbark their alders, and other trees; of which see Cap. III. Book III. But there is yet another way of planting alders after the Jersey manner, and as I receiv’d it from a most ingenious gentleman of that country, which is, by taking trunchions of two or three foot long, at the beginning of Winter, and to bind them in faggots, and place the ends of them in water ’till towards the Spring, by which season they will have contracted a swelling spire, or knurr about that part, which being set, does (like the gennet-moil apple-tree) never fail of growing and striking root. There is a black sort more affected to woods, and drier grounds; and bears a black berry, not so frequently found; yet growing somewhere about Hampsted, as the learned Dr. Tan. Robinson observes.