East Indies. When it is felled, the natives cleave it in two, and dig out the pith, which is even then eatable, as it comes fresh out of the tree. This fecula is extracted from the pith of the stem and branches by maceration in water; it is then washed, passed through a perforated copper plate, so as to reduce it to grains, which are then dried. The flower thus prepared is called sago: it is made into paste, and baked in earthen furnaces; this is done with so much expedition, that one man can make as much bread as will feed an hundred persons a day. Sago makes a most nutritious jelly, for persons with feeble digestive powers. It is said that the Japanese, who make great use of sago during war, are so fond of it, that it is prohibited under pain of death to give any of it to strangers. From the same tree a liquor is drawn, as agreeable to drink as our wines. The leaves when they are young, are covered with a kind of cotton, of which cloth is made; and as they grow older they serve to cover the houses of the inhabitants, instead of tiles. The largest of these leaves also serve for stakes in building; and the smaller yield a kind of hemp, fit for making very good ropes.

SALOP, is a starchy extract from the orchis mascula; ARROW-ROOT, from the maranta arundinacea; and CASSAVA from the tuberose root of the manioc or jatropha manihot. Many other plants yield a fecula, which forms a nutritious jelly for food.

The PAPER-MULBERRY or morus papyrifera. There is a manufactory of cloth established in many of the islands of the South Sea, of the stalks of the papermulberry. It is undertaken chiefly by women. They take the stalks, which grow about seven feet high, and about four fingers thick. From these stalks they strip the bark and scrape off the exterior rind. The bark is then softened sometime in water: it is next beaten with a square instrument of wood, full of coarse grooves. When sufficiently beaten, it is spread out to dry; the piece being from four to six or seven feet in length, and about half as broad. These pieces are joined by smearing part of them with the glutinous juice of the berry called tovo; and after being thus lengthened, they are placed over a large piece of wood, with a sort of stamp,

composed of a fibrous substance laid beneath them. The manufacturers then take a bit of cloth, and having dipped it in a juice, expressed from the bark of a tree called kokka, rub it briskly over the piece that is making. This leaves a dry gloss, and a dull brown colour upon the surface, and the stamp makes at the same time, a slight impression, which finishes the work. This manufactory, though so extremely inferior to many among the polished nations of Europe and Asia, seems however, to mark some little advance. ment into civilized life. The Japanese make their pa

per of the bark of this tree.

The CORK-TREE is a species of the oak or quercus suber. The cork which is used by us is the bark. The fruit of the cork-tree is a real acorn, which is much more agreeable than that of the oak. It is found in great abundance in Spain, Italy, France, &c. To take off the bark an incision is made from the top to the bottom of the tree, and at each extremity around it. When stripped from the tree, (which is not injured by the process) the bark is piled up in a pond or ditch, and laden with heavy stones to flatten it, and reduce it into tables, hence it is taken to be dried; and when sufficiently dry, it is slightly charred or burnt, and packed up in bales for carriage. If care be not taken to strip the bark, it splits and peels off of itself; being pushed up by another bark from underneath. The bark and the acorn of the cork tree are of some use in medicine, being both reputed as astringents, after being burnt and powdered, when used externally: but the chief use of the former is to stop bottles, and sometimes to put in shoes and slippers: and the Spaniards burn it to make that light kind of black, called Spanish black, used by painters.

The TALLOW.TREE, croton sebiferum, grows in China, in great abundance. A substance like our tallow, and which serves the same purpose, is obtained from its expressed oil. It is about the height of a cherry tree; its leaves are in the form of a heart, of a deep shining red colour, and its bark is very smooth. Its fruit is inclosed in a kind of pod or cover like a chesnut, and consists of three round white grains, of the size

and form of a small nut, and within each is a little stone. This stone is encompassed with a white pulp, which has all the properties of true tallow, both as to consistence, colour, and even smell; and accordingly the Chinese make their candles of it, which would doubtless be as good as those in Europe, if they knew how to purify their vegetable tallow, as well as we do our animal tallow. All the preparation' they give it, is to mix a little oil with it, to make it softer and more pliant. It is true, the candles they make yield a thicker smoke, and a dimmer light than ours; but those defects are owing in a great measure to the wicks, which are not of cotton but only a little rod or switch, of dry, light wood, covered with the pith of a rush, wound round it; which being very porous, serves to filtrate the minute parts of the tallow, attracted by the burning stick, which by this means is kept alive.

The LIQUORICE SHRUB is cultivated in many parts of England, particularly in Yorkshire; in some parts of France, Spain, Germany, and Muscovy, and especially in Persia, where it thrives better than in any other country, some of its roots being larger than a man's arm; and their juice, in respect of strength, virtue, &c. is preferable to others. The root of the liquorice plant runs or spreads a great way in the ground, and emerging into air from place to place, produces so many new stems or plants, few of which rise above five feet high. Its leaves are thick, green, shining, &c. its flowers red like the hyacinth, and its seed is contained in roundish pods. It requires a light, rich soil. It is planted in trenches three spits deep, in rows at a foot distant. New green liquorice should be smooth, and even, about the thickness of the middle finger, ruddy without, yellowish within, easy to cut, and of an agreeable smell. This root being boiled a long time in water, till the fluid has got a deep yellow tincture, and the water afterwards evaporated over a moderate fire; there remains a black solid sediment, which we call liquorice, or liquorice juice, or Spanish juice.

In choosing liquorice, that which, is black without, and of a shining black within, brittle, and of an agreeable taste is the best. The whitish and yellowish liquo.

rice juices are of little worth, being sometimes only a composition of sugar, starch, a little gum tragacanth; and liquorice powder. The native liquorice juice is very sweet upon the palate, even more so than sugar or honey; it is accounted a great quencher of thirst, on which account Galen prescribes it in dropsies. It is very balsamic, and there are few medicinal composi tions for coughs, or diseases of the breast, in which it is not an ingredient.

> The ACER SACCHARINUM, or Sugar Maple tree, grows in great quantities in the western countries of all the middle states of the American Union. The trees are generally found mixed with the beech, hemlock, white and water ash, the cucumber tree, and others. They grow only in the richest soils, and frequently in stony ground. Springs of the purest water abound in the neighbourhood. When fully grown they are as tall as the white and black oaks, and from two to three feet in diameter. They put forth a beautiful white blossom, in the spring before they shew a single leaf. The wood of the maple-tree is extremely inflammable. Its small branches are so much impregnated with sugar, that they afford support to the cattle, horses and sheep of the first settlers, during the winter, before they are able to cultivate forage for that purpose. Its ashes afford a great quantity of pot-ash, exceeded by few of the trees that grow in the woods of the United States. The tree is supposed to arrive at its full growth in twenty years. It is not injured by tapping; on the contrary, the oftener it is tapped, the more syrup it yields. The effects of a yearly discharge of sap from the tree, in improving and increasing the juice, are demonstrated from the superior excellence of those trees which have been perforated, inperhaps a hundred places, by a small wood-pecker, which feeds upon the sap. The usual method of obtaining the juice is by boring a hole in the tree with an augur; a spout is introduced about half an inch into the hole. The sap flows for a month or six weeks, according to the temperature of the weather. Troughs are placed under the spout to receive the sap, which is carried every day to a large

receiver, and from thence, after being strained, it is conveyed to the boiler.

There are three modes of reducing the sap to sugar; by evaporation, by freezing, and by boiling, of which the latter is most expeditious. The profit of this tree is not confined to its sugar. It affords a most agree. able melasses, and an excellent vinegar. The sap which is suitable for these purposes, is obtained after the juice, which affords the sugar, has ceased to flow; so that the manufactory of these different products of the maple-tree, by succeeding, do not interfere with each other. The melasses may be used to compose the basis of a pleasant summer beer. The sap is also capable of affording a spirit. A tree so various in its uses, may one day, if duly cultivated, so supply us with sugar, as to silence the arguments of the planters in favour of a traffic which is now happily done away.

FOSSIL, or Subterraneous Wood, is found in many places under ground; whether it has been buried there from the time of the deluge, or by some subsequent event, as many suppose; or whether formed and produced there, as jet is known to bé, is not quite clear.

In England there have been found at above an hundred feet under ground, several huge oaks, with all their branches on, and which by their situation had contracted a black colour, nothing inferior to jet, joined with a hardness, which far surpassed any living oak.. It is difficult to conceive how such trees could have come there, unless by some general inundation, or subversion of the present habitable soil. Mr. Boyle mentions a huge oak dug out of a salt mine in Transilvania, so hard as not easily to be wrought upon by iron tools yet being exposed to the air out of the mine, became so rotten, that in four days it crumbled between the fingers. And Mr. Denham observes the same of the trees turned up by the breaches at Dagenham. In some countries such fossil wood is found petrified into stone; in others it is so sound as to be used in buildings, or made into very durable furniture.

TIMBER TREES.

OAK. The uses to which oak is applied are numeIt will endure all weathers and seasons; hence it

rous.