in the anatomy of plants, the exterior part of trees, corresponding to the skin of an animal. For its organization, texture, &c. see the article PLANTS.

As animals are furnished with a panniculus adiposus, usually replete with fat, which invests and covers all the fleshy parts, and screens them from external cold; plants are encompassed with a bark replete with fatty juices, by means whereof the cold is kept out, and in winter-time the epicleve of ice prevented from fixing and freezing the juices in the vessels: whence it is, that some sort of trees remain evergreen the year round, by reason their barks contain more oil than can be spent and exhaled by the fun, &c.

The bark has its peculiar diseases, and is infested with insects peculiar to it.—It appears from the experiments of M. Buffon, that trees stripped of their bark the whole length of their stems, die in about three or four years. But it is very remarkable, that trees thus stripped in the time of the sap, and suffered to die, afford timber heavier, more uniformly dense, stronger, and fitter for service, than if the trees had been cut down in their healthy state. Something of a like nature has been observed by Vitruvius and Evelyn.

The ancients wrote their books on bark, especially of the ash and lime tree, not on the exterior, but on the inner and finer bark called philyra.

There are a great many kinds of barks in use in the several arts. Some in agriculture, and in tanning leather, as the oak-bark; some in physic, as the quinquina or Jesuit's bark, mace, &c.; others in dyeing, as the bark of alder, and walnut-trees; others in spicey, as cinnamon, cassia lignea, &c.; and others for divers uses, as the bark of the cork tree, &c.

In the East Indies, they prepare the bark of a certain tree so as to spin like hemp. After it has been beat and steeped in water, they extract long threads from it, which are something between silk and common thread; being neither so soft nor so glossy as silk, nor so rough and hard as hemp. They mix silk with it in some stuffs; and these are called nilaas, and cherque-moller.

Of the bark of a species of mulberry-tree the Japanese make their paper. See MORUS.

In the island of Otaheite, the natives make their cloth, which is of three kinds, of the bark of three different trees; the paper-mulberry above mentioned, the bread-fruit tree, and the cocoa tree. That made of the mulberry is the finest and whitest, and worn chiefly by the principal people. It is manufactured in the following manner. When the trees are of a proper size, they are drawn up, and stripped of their branches; after which, the roots and tops are cut off: the bark of these rods being then slit up longitudinally, is easily drawn off; and, when a proper quantity has been procured, it is carried down to some running water, in which it is deposited to soak, and secured from floating away by heavy stones: when it is supposed to be sufficiently softened, the women servants go down to the brook, and stripping themselves, sit down in the water, to separate the inner bark from the green part on the outside: to do this, they place the under side upon a flat smooth board, and with a kind of shell scrape it very carefully, dipping it continually in the water till nothing remains but the fine fibres of the inner coat. Being thus prepared in the afternoon, they are spread out upon plantain leaves in the evening; they are placed in lengths of about 11 or 12 yards, one by the side of another, till they are about a foot broad, and two or three layers are also laid one upon the other: care is taken that the cloth shall be in all parts of an equal thickness, so that if the bark happens to be thinner in any one particular part of one layer than the rest, a piece that is somewhat thicker is picked out to be laid over in the next. In this state it remains till the morning, when great part of the water which it contained when it was laid out is either drained off or evaporated, and the several fibres adhere together, so as that the whole may be raised from the ground in one piece. It is then taken away, and laid upon the smooth side of a long piece of wood prepared for the purpose, and beaten by the women servants. The instrument used for this purpose is a square wooden club, having each of its four sides or faces marked, lengthwise, with small grooves, or furrows, of different degrees of fineness; those on one side being of a width and depth sufficient to receive a small pack-thread, and the others finer in a regular gradation, so that the last are not more than equal to sewing silk. They beat it first with the coarsest side of this mallet, keeping time like our smiths; it spreads very fast under the strokes, chiefly however in the breadth, and the grooves in the mallet mark it with the appearance of threads; it is successively beaten with the other sides, last with the finest, and is then fit for use. Of this cloth there are several sorts, of different degrees of fineness, in proportion as it is more or less beaten. The other cloth also differs in proportion as it is beaten; but they differ from each other in consequence of the different materials of which they are made. The bark of the bread-fruit is not taken till the trees are considerably longer and thicker than those of the mulberry; the process afterwards is the same.—Of the bark, too, of a tree which they call poerou*, they manufacture excellent matting;* Hibiscus both a coarse sort which serves them to sleep upon, and tiliaceus of a finer to wear in wet weather. Of the same bark they Linnaeus also make ropes and lines, from the thickness of an inch to the size of a small pack-thread.

or Jesuit's Bark, is a name given by way of eminence to the quinquina, or cinchona. See CINCHONA.

in Navigation, a general name given to small ships; it is, however, peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry three masts without a mizen top-sail. Our northern mariners, who are trained in the coal-trade, apply this distinction to a broad-sterned ship which carries no ornamental figure on the stern or prow.

Water-BARKS, are little vessels used in Holland for the carriage of fresh water to places where it is wanting, ing, as well as for the fetching sea-water to make salt of. They have a deck, and are filled with water up to the deck.

BARK-Binding, a distemper incident to trees; cured by slitting the bark, or cutting along the grain.

BARK-Galling, is when the trees are galled with thorns, &c. It is cured by binding clay on the galled places.

BARK-Longue, or Barca Longa, a small, low, sharp-built, but very long vessel, without a deck. It goes with sails and oars, and is very common in Spain.