HKB
The medical virtues of this tree are for all affects of the nerves, astringent and refrigerating, for the hernia, apply’d outwardly, or taken inwardly, for the dysentary, strangury, &c.
But to resume the disquisition, whether it be truly so proper for shipping, is controverted; though we also find in Cassiodorus Var. l. 5. ep. 16, Theodoric (writing to the Prætorio-præfectus) caused store of it to be provided for that purpose; and Plato (who we told you made laws, and titles to be engraven in it) nominates it, inter arbores ναυπηγοῖς utiles l. 4. leg. and so does Diodorus l. 19. And as travellers observe, there is no other sort of timber more fit for shipping, {276:1} though others think it too heavy: Aristobulus affirms that the Assyrians made all their vessels of it; and indeed the Romans prais’d it, pitch’d with Arabian pitch: And so frequent was this tree about those parts of Assyria (where the Ark is conjectur’d to have been built) that those vast Armada’s, which Alexander the Great caus’d to be equipp’d and set out from Babylon, consisted only of cypress, as we learn out of Arrian in Alex. l. 7. and Strabo l. 16. Plutar. Sympos. l. 1, prob. 2. Vegetius l. 14. c. 34, &c. Paulus Colomesius (in his κειμήλια literaria cap. 24.) perstringes the most learned Is. Vossius, that in his vindiciae pro LXX. interp. he affirms cypress not fit for ships, as being none of the τετράγωνοι: But besides what we have produced, Fuller, Bochartus, &c. Lilius Gyraldus (Lib. de navig. c. 4.) and divers others sufficiently evince it, and that the vessel built by Trajan was of that material, lasting uncorrupt near 1400 years, when it was afterwards found in a certain lake; if it were not rather (as I suspect) that which Æneas Silvius reports to have been discovered in his time, lying under water in the Numidian Lake, crusted over with a certain ferruginous mixture of earth and scales, as if it had been of iron; but (as we have elsewhere noted) it was pronounced to be larix, and not cypress, employ’d by Tiberius: Finally (not to forget even the very chips of this precious wood, which give that flavour to muscadines, and other rich wines) I commend it for the improvement of the air, and a specific for the lungs, as sending forth most sweet, and aromatick emissions, whenever it is either clipp’d, or handled, and the chips or cones, being burnt, extinguish moths, and expels the gnats and flies, &c. not omitting the gum which it yields, not much inferior to the terebinthine or lentise.