HKB
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.
We have often mention’d the virtue of these odoriferous woods, for the improvement of the air; upon which I take occasion here to add, what I have (some years since) already{277:1} publish’d, concerning the melioration of it, in, and about this great and populous city, accidentally obnoxious to the effects of those nauseous vapours, exhaling from those many unclean places, and tainting that dismal cloud of sulphurous (if not arsenical) smoke, which we uncessantly breathe in. I know the late terrible conflagration, by the care and industry of the magistrate, in causing so many kennels, sinks, gutters, lay-stalls and other nuisances (receptacles of a stagnant filth) to be removed, must needs have exceedingly contributed to the purifying of the air; as I am persuaded would appear upon a political observation in the bills of mortality: But what I yet cannot but deplore, is, that, (when that spacious area, was so long a rasa tabula) the church-yards had not been banish’d to the North-walls of the city, where a grated inclosure of competent breadth (for a mile in length) might have served for an universal cœmetery, to all the parishes, distinguish’d by the like separations, and with ample walks of trees; the walks adorn’d with monuments, inscriptions and titles apt for contemplation and memory of the defunct; and that wise, and ancient law of the XII Tables restor’d and reviv’d: But concerning this, and hortulan buryings upon this and other weighty reasons, see cap. I. book IV. Happy in the mean time, had it been for the further purgation of this august metropolis, had they there, (or did they yet) banish and proscribe those hellish vulcanos, disgorging from the brew-houses, sope and salt-boilers, chandlers, hat-makers, glass-houses, forges, lime-kilns, and other trades, using such quantities of sea-coals, one of whose funnels vomits more smoak than all the culinary and chamber-fires of a whole parish, as I have (with no small indignation) observed, at what time they usually put out their fires, on Saturday evening, and re-kindle on Sunday night, or Monday morning; perniciously infecting the ambient air, with a black melancholy canopy, to the detriment of the most valuable moveables and furniture of the inhabitants, and the whole countrey about it. A bar of iron shall be more exeded and consum’d with rust in one year in this city, than in thrice-seven in the countrey: Why might it not therefore be worth a severe and publick edict, to remove these vulcanos and infernal houses of smoak to competent distance; some down the river, others (which require conveniency of fresh-water) up the Thames, among the streams about Wandsworth, &c? Their commodities and manufactures brought up to capacious wharfs, on the bank, or London side, to the increase of a thousand water-men and other labourers, of which we cannot have too many?