i2 9 



as it refts wholly on tradition, we pay it the 

 lefs attention. What Pliny fays in favour of 

 the fourth tree however has fomewhat more of 

 weight This tree, he tells us, grew in the 

 Vatican j and had it's age infcribed in old Tuf- 

 can charafters, upon it's trunk; from which 

 infcription it appeared, that before the city 

 of Rome had it's exiftence, this holm was 

 a celebrated tree* * 



When Tiberius built his naumachia, and 

 had occafion for large beams in feveral parts 

 of his work, he endeavoured to collect them 

 from the various forefts of the empire. Among 

 other mafly pieces of timber, which were 

 brought to Rome on this occafion, the trunk 

 of a larch was of fo prodigious a fize, that 

 the emperor, inflead of ufmg it in his works, 

 ordered it to be laid up as a curiofity. It 

 meafured a hundred and twenty feet in 

 length, carrying a diameter of two feet to 

 the very end*. When this larch was alive, 

 with all the furniture of it's vaft top, and 



* Plin. Nat. Hift. 1. xvi. c. 40. 

 VOL. i. . k gigantic 



