3. I should here add the uses of the water too, had I full permission to tamper with all the medicinal virtues of trees: But if the sovereign effects of the juice of this despicable tree supply its other defects (which make some judge it unworthy to be brought into the catalogue of woods to be propagated) I may perhaps for once, be permitted to play the empiric, and to gratifie our laborious wood-man with a draught of his own liquor; and the rather, because these kind of secrets are not yet sufficiently cultivated; and ingenious planters would by all means be encourag’d to make more trials of this nature, as the Indians and other nations have done on their palmes; and trees of several kinds, to their great emolument. The mystery is no more than this: About the beginning of March (when the buds begin to be proud and turgid, and before they explain into leaves) with a chizel and a mallet, cut a slit almost as deep as the very pith, under some bough or branch of a well-spreading birch; cut it oblique, and not long-ways (as a good chirurgion would make his orifice in a vein) inserting a small stone or chip, to keep the lips of the wound a little open. Sir Hugh Plat, (giving a general rule for the gathering of sap, and tapping of trees) would have it done within one foot of the ground, the first rind taken off, and then the white bark slit over-thwart, no farther than to the body of the tree: Moreover, that this wound be made only in that part of the bark which respects the south-west, or between those quarters; because (says he) little or no sap riseth from the northern, nor indeed when the east-wind blows. In this slit, by the help of your knife to open it, he directs that a leaf of the tree be inserted, first fitted to the dimensions of the slit, from which the sap will distil in manner of filtration: Take away the leaf, and the bark will close again, a little earth being clapped to the slit. Thus the Knight for any tree. But we have already shew’d how the birch is to be treated: Fasten therefore a bottle, or some such convenient vessel appendant; this does the effect as well as perforation or tapping: Out of this aperture will extil a limpid and clear water, retaining an obscure smack both of the tast and odor of the tree; and which (as I am credibly inform’d) will in the space of twelve or fourteen days, preponderate, and out-weigh the whole tree it self, body and roots; which if it be constant, and so happen likewise in other trees, is not only stupendous, but an experiment worthy the consideration of our profoundest philosophers: _An ex sola aqua fiunt arbores?_ whether water only be the principle of vegetables, and consequently of trees: I say, I am credibly inform’d; and therefore the late unhappy{ 144:1} angry-man might have spar’d his animadversion: For he that said but twenty gallons run, does he know how many more might have been gotten out of larger apertures, at the insertion of every branch, and foot in the principal roots during the whole season? But I conceive I have good authority for my assertion, out of the author cited in the margin, whose words are these: _Si mense Martio perforaveris betulam, &c. exstillabit aqua limpida, clara, & pura, obscurum arboris saporem & odorem referens, quæ spatio 12 aut 14 dierum, præponderabit arbori cum ramis & radicibus, &c._ His exceptions about the beginning of March are very insignificant; since I undertake not punctuality of time; and his own pretended experience shew’d him, that in hard weather it did not run till the expiration of the month, or beginning of April; and another time on the tenth of February; and usually he says, about the twenty-fourth day, &c. at such uncertainty: What immane difference then is there between the twenty-fourth of Feb. and commencement of March? Besides, these anomolous bleedings, (even of the same tree) happen early or later, according to the temper of the air and weather.