like hereof is yet observed in Venice. Read also, I
pray you, what Suetonius writeth of the consulship of Bibulus and Caesar.
As for the wood that Ancus Martius dedicated toward the maintenance of the
common navy, I pass it over, as having elsewhere remembered it unto
another end. But what do I mean to speak of these, sith my purpose is only
to talk of our own woods? Well, take this then for a final conclusion in
woods, that besides some countries are already driven to sell their wood
by the pound, which is a heavy report, within these forty years we shall
have little great timber growing about forty years old; for it is commonly
seen that those young staddles which we leave standing at one and twenty
years fall are usually at the next sale cut down without any danger of the
statute, and serve for fire bote, if it please the owner to burn them.

Marshes and fenny bogs we have many in England, though not now so many as
some of the old Roman writers do specify, but more in Wales, if you have
respect unto the several quantities of the countries. Howbeit, as they are
very profitable in the summer half of the year, so are a number of them
which lie low and near to great rivers to small commodity in the winter
part, as common experience doth teach. Yet this I find of many moors, that
in times past they have been harder ground, and sundry of them well
replenished with great woods that now are void of bushes. And, for the
example hereof, we may see the trial (beside the roots that are daily
found in the deeps of Monmouth, where turf is digged, also in Wales,
Abergavenny, and Merioneth) in sundry parts of Lancashire, where great
store of fir hath grown in times past, as I said, and the people go unto
this day into their fens and marshes with long spits, which they dash here
and there up to the very cronge into the ground. In which practice (a
thing commonly done in winter), if they happen to smite upon any fir trees
which lie there at their whole lengths, or other blocks, they note the
place, and about harvest time (when the ground is at the driest) they come
again and get them up, and afterward, carrying them home, apply them to
their uses. The like do they in Shropshire with the like, which hath been
felled in old time, within seven miles of Salop. Some of them foolishly
suppose the same to have lien there since Noah's flood: and other, more
fond than the rest, imagine them to grow even in the places where they
find them, withou