ENQUIRY INTO PLANTS, V. VII. 5–7
building and also for other kinds of work, but silver-fir is of use for more purposes than fir. Aleppo pine is used for both kinds of building, but especially for ship-building, yet it soon rots. Oak is used for house-building, for ship-building, and also for underground work; lime for the deck-planks of long ships, for boxes, and for the manufacture of measures; its bark is also useful for ropes and writing-cases,[1] for these are sometimes made of it.
Maple and zygia are used for making beds and the yokes of beasts of burden: yew for the ornamental work attached[2] to chests and footstools and the like: kermes-oak[3] for the axles of wheelbarrows[4] and the cross-bars of lyres and psalteries: beech for making waggons and cheap carts: elm for making doors and weasel-traps, and to some extent it is also used for waggon work; pedos[5] for waggon-axles and the stocks of ploughs: andrachne is used for women for parts of the loom: Phoenician cedar for carpenters' work[6] and for work which is either to be exposed to the air or buried underground, because it does not decay. Similarly the sweet chestnut is used, and it is even less likely to decay if it is used for underground work. Box is used for some purposes; however that which grows on Mount Olympus[7] is useless, because only short pieces can be obtained and the wood[8] is full of knots. Terebinth is not used,[9] except the fruit and the resin.
- ↑ κίστας: cf. 3. 13. 1; perhaps 'hampers,' cf. 5. 7. 7.
- ↑ ραπακολλήματα: lit. 'things glued on.'
- ↑ Plin. 16. 229.
- ↑ ταῖς μονοστρόφοις ἁμάξαις: or, perhaps, 'the wheels of carts with solid wheels.' ταῖς conj. Sch.; τε καὶ UMV; τε καὶ μονοστρόφους ἁμάξας Ald.
- ↑ πηδος (with varying accent) MSS.: probably=πάδος, 4. 1. 3; πύοξς Ald., but see sec. 7.
- ↑ τεκτονίας can hardly be right.
- ↑ cf. 3. 15. 5.
- ↑ cf. 1. 8. 2, of box in general; Plin. 16. 71.
- ↑ Inconsistent with 5. 3. 2.
