III.7 "as an Animal is a Plant"

By mid-century, the very subject of trees had become more likely fodder for the Royal Society than religion. In a paper first presented to the Society in 1662 then printed as a book in 1664, John Evelyn outlines a more productive method of cultivating England's forests; however, its aim is not a flourishing woodlands, bursting with life, but dead timber for the Navy's wooden boats. Rather than human cousins -- siblings, even -- the fruits of divine creation thus become human property, conscripted into military service, and man as an arbor inversa becomes a quaint metaphor for better rooting trees.