................. She prest A long fir-spear through his exposed breast.{ 242:1}
Lastly, the very chips, or shavings of deal-boards, are of other use than to kindle fires alone: Thomas Bartholinus in his _Medicina Danorum Dissert._ 7, &c. where he disclaims the use of hops in beer, (as pernicious and malignant, and from several instances how apt it is to produce and usher in infections, nay, plagues, &c.) would substitute in its place, the shavings of deal-boards, as he affirms, to give a grateful odor to the drink; and how soveraign those resinous-woods, the tops of fir, and pines, are against the scorbut, gravel in the kidneys, &c. we generally find: It is in the same chapter, that he commends also wormwood, _marrubium_, _chamelæagnum_, sage, tamarisc, and almost any thing, rather than hops. The bark of the pine heals ulcers; and the inner rind cut small, contus’d, and boil’d in store of water, is an excellent remedy for burns and scalds, washing the sore with the decoction, and applying the softned bark: It is also soveraign against frozen and benumb’d limbs: The distill’d water of the green cones takes away the wrinkles of the face, dipping cloaths therein, and laying them on it becomes a cosmetic not to be despis’d. The pine, or _picea_ buried in the earth never decay: From the latter transudes a very bright and pellucid gum; hence we have likewise rosin; also of the pine are made boxes and barrels for dry goods; yea, and it is cloven into (_scandulæ_) shingles for the covering of houses in some places; also hoops for wine-vessels, especially of the easily flexible wild-pine; not to forget the kernels (this tree being always furnish’d with cones, some ripe, others green) of such admirable use in emulsions; and for tooth-pickers, even the very leaves are commended: In sum, they are plantations which exceedingly improve the air, by their odoriferous and balsamical emissions and, for ornament, create a perpetual Spring where they are plentifully propagated. And if it could be proved that the _almugim_-trees, recorded{ 243:1} 1 _Reg._ 11, 12. (whereof pillars for that famous temple, and the royal palace, harps, and psalteries, &c. were made) were of this sort of wood (as some doubt not to assert) we should esteem it at another rate; yet we know Josephus affirms they were a kind of pine-tree, though somewhat resembling the fig-tree wood to appearance, as of a most lustrous candor. In the 2 _Chron._ 2, 8. there is mention of almug-trees to grow in Lebanon; and if so, methinks it should rather be (as Buxtorf thinks) a kind of cedar; (yet we find fir also in the same period) for we have seen a whiter sort of it, even very white as well as red; though some affirm it to be but the sap of it (so our cabinet-makers call it) I say, there were both fir and pine-trees also growing upon those mountains, and the learned Meibomius, (in that curious treatise of his _De Fabrica Triremium_) shews that there were such trees brought out of India, or Ophir. In the mean time, Mr. Purchas informs us, that Dr. Dee writ a laborious treatise almost wholly of this subject, (but I could never have the good hap to see it) wherein, as commissioner for Solomon’s timber, and like a learned architect and planter, he has summon’d a jury of twelve sorts of trees; namely, 1. the fir, 2. box, 3. cedar, 4. cypress, 5. ebony, 6. ash, 7. juniper, 8. larch, 9. olive, 10. pine, 11. oak, and 12. sandal-trees, to examine which of them were this _almugim_, and at last seems to concur with Josephus, in favour of pine or fir; who possibly, from some antient record, or fragment of the wood it self, might learn something of it; and ’tis believ’d, that it was some material both odoriferous to the scent, and beautiful to the eye, and of fittest temper to refract sounds; besides its serviceableness for building; all which properties are in the best sort of pine or _thyina_, as Pliny calls it; or perhaps some other rare wood, of which the Eastern Indies are doubtless the best provided; and yet I find, that those vast beams which sustain’d the roof of St. Peter’s church at Rome, laid (as reported) by Constantine the Great, were made of the pitch-tree, and have lasted from _anno_ 336, down to our days, above 1300 years.