11. If you affect to see your cypress in standard, and grow wild, (which may in time come to be of a large substance, fit for the most immortal of timber, and indeed are the least obnoxious to the rigours of our Winters, provided you never clip or disbranch them) plant of the reputed male-sort; it is a tree which will prosper wonderfully; and where the ground is hot and gravelly, though (as we said) he be nothing so beautiful; and it is of this, that the Venetians make their greatest profit.
12. I have already shew’d how this tree is to be rais’d from the seed; but there was another method amongst the Ancients, who (as I told you) were wont to make great plantations of them for their timber; I have practis’d it my self, and therefore describe it.
13. If you receive your seed in the roundish small nuts, which use to be gather’d thrice a year, (but seldom ripening with us) expose them to the sun till they gape, or near a gentle fire, or put them in warm water, (as was directed in those of cedar) by which means the seeds will be easily shaken out; for if you have them open before, they do not yield you half their crop: About the beginning of April (or before, if the weather be showery) prepare an even bed, which being made of fine earth, clap down with your spade, as gardeners do for purselain seed (of old they roll’d it with some stone, or cylinder); upon this strew your seeds pretty thick; then sift over them some more mould, somewhat better than half an inch in height: Keep them duly watered after sunset, unless the season do it for you; and after one year’s growth, (for they will be an inch high in little more than two months) you may transplant them where you please: If in the nursery, set them at a foot or 18 inches distance in even lines, kept watered and moist, ’till they are well rooted, and fit to be remov’d. In watering them, I give you this caution (which may also serve you for most tender and delicate seeds) that you bedew them rather with a broom, or spergitory, than hazard the beating them out with the common watering-pot; and when they are well come up, be but sparing of water: Be sure likewise that you cleanse them when the weeds are very young and tender, lest instead of purging, you quite eradicate your cypress: We have spoken of watering, and indeed whilst young, if well follow’d, they will make a prodigious advance. When that long and incomparable walk of cypress at Frascati near Rome, was first planted, they drew a small stream (and indeed irrigare is properly thus, aquam inducere riguis (i. e.) in small gutters and rills) by the foot of it, (as the water there is in abundance tractable) and made it (as I was credibly inform’d) arrive to seven or eight foot height in one year; (which does not agree with the epithet, lenta cupressus); but with us, we may not be too prodigal; since, being once well taken, they thrive best in our sandy, light and warmest grounds, whence Cardan says, juxta aquas arescit; meaning in low and moorish places, stiff and cold earth, &c. where they never thrive.
There is also a Virginian cypress, of an enormous height, beautiful and very spreading, the branches and leaves large and regular, with the clogs resembling the cypress; and though the timber be somewhat course and cross-grain’d, ’tis when polish’d, very agreeable; as I can shew in a very large table, made out of the planks of a spurr only; and had experience of its lastingness, tho’ expos’d both to the air and weather.
14. What the uses of this timber are, for chests, and other utensils, harps, and divers other musical instruments (it being a very sonorous wood, and therefore employ’d for organ-pipes, as heretofore for supporters of vines, poles, rails, and planks, (resisting the worm, moth, and all putrefaction to eternity) the Venetians sufficiently understood; who did every twenty year, and oftner (the Romans every thirteen) make a considerable revenue of it out of Candy: And certainly, a very gainful commodity it was, when the fell of a cupressetum, was heretofore reputed a good daughters portion, and the plantation it self call’d dos filiæ. But there was in Candy a vast wood of these trees, belonging to the Republique, by malice, or accident (or perhaps by solar heat, as were many woods 74 years after, even here in England) set on fire, which anno 1400, burning for seven years continually, before it could be quite extinguish’d, fed so long a space by the unctuous nature of the timber, of which there were to be seen at Venice planks of above four foot in breadth; and formerly the valves of St. Peter’s church at Rome, were fram’d of this material, which lasted from the great Constantine, to Pope Eugenius the Fourth’s time, eleven hundred years; and then were found as fresh, and entire as if they had been new: But this Pope would needs change them for gates of brass, which were cast by the famous Antonio Philarete; not in my opinion so venerable, as those of cypress. It was in coffins of this material, that Thucydides tells us, the Athenians us’d to bury their heroes, and the mummy-chests brought with those condited bodies out of Egypt, are many of them of this material, which ’tis probable may have lain in those dry, and sandy crypta, many thousand years.
15. The timber of this wood was of infinite esteem with the Ancients: That lasting bridge built over the Euphrates by Semiramis, was made of this material; and it is reported, Plato chose it to write his laws in, before brass it self, for the diuturnity of the matter: It is certain, that it never rifts or cleaves, but with great violence; and the bitterness of its juice, preserves it from all worms and putrifaction. To this day those of Crete and Malta make use of it for their buildings; because they have it in plenty, and there is nothing out-lasts it, or can be more beautiful, especially, than the root of the wilder sort, incomparable for its crisped undulations. Divers learned persons have conceiv’d the gopher mention’d in Holy Writ, Gen. 6. 14. (and of which the Ark was built) to have been no other than this Κυπάρισσος, cupar, or cuper, by the easie mutation of letters; Aben Ezra names it a light wood apt to swim; so does David Kimchi; which rather seems to agree with fir or pine, and such as the Greeks call ξύλα τετράγωνα quadrangular trees, about which criticks have made a deal of stir: But Isa. Vossius (on the lxx. c. ii.) has sufficiently made it out, that the timber of that denomination was of those sort of trees whose branches breaking out just opposite to one another at right angles, make it appear to have been fir, or some sort of wood whose arms grew in a uniform manner; but surely this is not to be universally taken; since we find yew, and divers other trees, brittle, heavy, and unapt for shipping, do often put forth in that order: The same learned author will have gopher to signifie only pitch, or bitumen, as much as if the text had said, make an ark of resinous timber. The Chaldee paraphrase translates it cedar, or as Junius and Tremellius, cedrelaten, a species between fir and cedar: Munster contends for the pine, and divers able divines endeavour to prove it cypress; and besides, ’tis known, that in Crete they employ’d it for the same use in the largest contignations, and did formerly build ships of it: And Epiphanius Hæres, l. 1. tells us, some reliques of that ark (circa campos sennaar) lasted even to his days, and was judged to have been of cypress. Some indeed suppose that gopher was the name of a place, à cupressis, as Elon à quercubus; and might possibly be that which Strabo calls Cupressetum, near Adiabene in Assyria: But for the reason of its long lasting, coffins (as noted) for the dead were made of it, and thence it first became to be diti sacra; and the valves, or doors of the Ephesine temple were likewise of it, as we observ’d but now, were those of St. Peters at Rome: Works of cypress-wood, permanent ad diuturnitatem, says Vitruvius l. 2. And the poet
..............perpetuâ nunquam moritura cupresso.
Mart. E. 6. 6.
The medical virtues of this tree are for all affects of the nerves, astringent and refrigerating, for the hernia, apply’d outwardly, or taken inwardly, for the dysentary, strangury, &c.
But to resume the disquisition, whether it be truly so proper for shipping, is controverted; though we also find in Cassiodorus Var. l. 5. ep. 16, Theodoric (writing to the Prætorio-præfectus) caused store of it to be provided for that purpose; and Plato (who we told you made laws, and titles to be engraven in it) nominates it, inter arbores ναυπηγοῖς utiles l. 4. leg. and so does Diodorus l. 19. And as travellers observe, there is no other sort of timber more fit for shipping, [276:1] though others think it too heavy: Aristobulus affirms that the Assyrians made all their vessels of it; and indeed the Romans prais’d it, pitch’d with Arabian pitch: And so frequent was this tree about those parts of Assyria (where the Ark is conjectur’d to have been built) that those vast Armada’s, which Alexander the Great caus’d to be equipp’d and set out from Babylon, consisted only of cypress, as we learn out of Arrian in Alex. l. 7. and Strabo l. 16. Plutar. Sympos. l. 1, prob. 2. Vegetius l. 14. c. 34, &c. Paulus Colomesius (in his κειμήλια literaria cap. 24.) perstringes the most learned Is. Vossius, that in his vindiciae pro LXX. interp. he affirms cypress not fit for ships, as being none of the τετράγωνοι: But besides what we have produced, Fuller, Bochartus, &c. Lilius Gyraldus (Lib. de navig. c. 4.) and divers others sufficiently evince it, and that the vessel built by Trajan was of that material, lasting uncorrupt near 1400 years, when it was afterwards found in a certain lake; if it were not rather (as I suspect) that which Æneas Silvius reports to have been discovered in his time, lying under water in the Numidian Lake, crusted over with a certain ferruginous mixture of earth and scales, as if it had been of iron; but (as we have elsewhere noted) it was pronounced to be larix, and not cypress, employ’d by Tiberius: Finally (not to forget even the very chips of this precious wood, which give that flavour to muscadines, and other rich wines) I commend it for the improvement of the air, and a specific for the lungs, as sending forth most sweet, and aromatick emissions, whenever it is either clipp’d, or handled, and the chips or cones, being burnt, extinguish moths, and expels the gnats and flies, &c. not omitting the gum which it yields, not much inferior to the terebinthine or lentise.
We have often mention’d the virtue of these odoriferous woods, for the improvement of the air; upon which I take occasion here to add, what I have (some years since) already[277:1] publish’d, concerning the melioration of it, in, and about this great and populous city, accidentally obnoxious to the effects of those nauseous vapours, exhaling from those many unclean places, and tainting that dismal cloud of sulphurous (if not arsenical) smoke, which we uncessantly breathe in. I know the late terrible conflagration, by the care and industry of the magistrate, in causing so many kennels, sinks, gutters, lay-stalls and other nuisances (receptacles of a stagnant filth) to be removed, must needs have exceedingly contributed to the purifying of the air; as I am persuaded would appear upon a political observation in the bills of mortality: But what I yet cannot but deplore, is, that, (when that spacious area, was so long a rasa tabula) the church-yards had not been banish’d to the North-walls of the city, where a grated inclosure of competent breadth (for a mile in length) might have served for an universal cœmetery, to all the parishes, distinguish’d by the like separations, and with ample walks of trees; the walks adorn’d with monuments, inscriptions and titles apt for contemplation and memory of the defunct; and that wise, and ancient law of the XII Tables restor’d and reviv’d: But concerning this, and hortulan buryings upon this and other weighty reasons, see cap. I. book IV. Happy in the mean time, had it been for the further purgation of this august metropolis, had they there, (or did they yet) banish and proscribe those hellish vulcanos, disgorging from the brew-houses, sope and salt-boilers, chandlers, hat-makers, glass-houses, forges, lime-kilns, and other trades, using such quantities of sea-coals, one of whose funnels vomits more smoak than all the culinary and chamber-fires of a whole parish, as I have (with no small indignation) observed, at what time they usually put out their fires, on Saturday evening, and re-kindle on Sunday night, or Monday morning; perniciously infecting the ambient air, with a black melancholy canopy, to the detriment of the most valuable moveables and furniture of the inhabitants, and the whole countrey about it. A bar of iron shall be more exeded and consum’d with rust in one year in this city, than in thrice-seven in the countrey: Why might it not therefore be worth a severe and publick edict, to remove these vulcanos and infernal houses of smoak to competent distance; some down the river, others (which require conveniency of fresh-water) up the Thames, among the streams about Wandsworth, &c? Their commodities and manufactures brought up to capacious wharfs, on the bank, or London side, to the increase of a thousand water-men and other labourers, of which we cannot have too many?