2. The uses of cork is well known amongst us, both at sea and land, for its resisting both water and air: The fisher-men who deal in nets, and all who deal with liquors, cannot be without it: Ancient persons prefer it before leather for the soles of their shooes, being light, dry, and resisting moisture, whence the Germans name it _Pantoffel-holts_ (slipper-wood) perhaps from the Greek Παντὸς & φέλλος; for I find it first applied to that purpose by the Grecian ladies, whence they were call’d light-footed; I know not whether the epithet do still belong to that sex; but from them it’s likely the Venetian dames took it up for their monstrous _choppines_; affecting, or usurping an artificial eminency above men, which nature has denied them. Of one of the sorts of cork are made pretty cups, and other vessels, esteem’d good to drink out of for hectical persons: The Egyptians made their coffins of it, which being lin’d with a resinous composition, preserved their dead incorrupt: The poor people in Spain, lay broad planks of it by their beds-side, to tread on (as great persons use Turky and Persian carpets) to defend them from the floor, and sometimes they line or wainscot the walls, and inside of their houses built of stone, with this bark, which renders them very warm, and corrects the moisture of the air: Also they employ it for bee-hives, and to double the insides of their _contemplores_, and leather-cases, wherein they put flasquéra’s with snow to refrigerate their wine. This tree has beneath the _cortex_ or cork, two other coats, or _libri_, of which one is reddish, which they strip from the hole when ’tis fell’d only; and this bears good price with the tanner; The rest of the wood is very good firing, and applicable to many other uses of building, palisade-work, &c. The ashes drunk, stop the bloody-flux.
3. _Ilex_, _major glandifera_, or great scarlet-oak of several species, and various in the shape of their leaf, pointed rounder, longer, &c. (a devoted tree of old, and therefore _incaedua_) thrives manifestly with us; witness His Majesty’s privy-garden at White-hall, where once flourish’d a goodly tree, of more than fourscore years growth, and there was lately a sickly imp of it remaining: And now very many rais’d by me, have thriv’d wonderfully, braving the most severe Winters, planted either in standards or hedges, which they most beautifully become. The only difficulty is in their being dextrously removed out of the nursery, with the mould adhering to the roots; otherwise apt to miscarry; and therefore best trusting to the acorn for a goodly standard, and that may be removed without prejudice, tryals should be made by graffing the _ilex_ in the oak-stock, taken out of our woods, or better, grown from the acorn to the bigness of one’s little finger.