From “Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees.”

FOR their preservation, nature has invested the whole tribe and nation (as we may say) of vegetables with garments suitable to their naked and exposed bodies, temper, and climate. Thus some are clad with a coarser [skin], and resist all extremes of weather; others with more tender and delicate skins and scarfs, as it were, and thinner raiment. Quid foliorum describam diversitates? What shall we say of the mysterious forms, variety, and variegation of the leaves and flowers, contrived with such art, yet without art; some round, others long, oval, multangular, indented, crisped, rough, smooth, and polished, soft, and flexible at every tremulous blast, as if it would drop in a moment, and yet so obstinately adhering, as to be able to contest against the fiercest winds that prostrate mighty structures! There it abides till God bids it fall: for so the wise Disposer of things has placed it, not only for ornament, but use and protection both of body and fruit; from the excessive heat of summer, and colds of the sharpest winters, and their immediate impressions; as we find it in all such places and trees, as, like the blessed and good man, have always fruit upon them, ripe, or preparing to mature; such as the pine, fir, arbutus, orange, and most of those which the Indies and more southern tracts plentifully abound in, where nature provides this continual shelter, and clothes them with perennial garments.

  Let us examine with what care the seeds (in which the whole and complete tree, though invisible to our dull sense, is yet perfectly and entirely wrapped up) exposed, as they seem to be, to all those accidents of weather, storms, and rapacious birds, are yet preserved from avolation, diminution, and detriment, within their spiny, armed, and compacted receptacles; where they sleep as in their causes, till their prisons let them gently fall into the embraces of the earth, now made pregnant with the season, and ready for another burden: for at the time of year she fails not to bring them forth. With what delight have I beheld this tender and innumerable offspring repullulating at the feet of an aged tree, from whence the suckers are drawn, transplanted and educated by human industry, and, forgetting the ferity of their nature, become civilized to all his employments.

  Can we look on the prodigious quantity of liquor, which one poor wounded birch will produce in a few hours, and not be astonished? Is it not wonderful that some trees should, in a short space of time, weep more than they weigh? And that so dry, so feeble, and wretched a branch as that which bears the grape should yield a juice that cheers the heart of man? That the pine, fir, larch, and other resinous trees planted in such rude and uncultivated places, amongst rocks and dry pumices should transude into turpentine, and pearl out into gums and precious balms?