18 FOREST LIFE AND 



and even into the most remote parts of the then barbarous France, 

 where the natives were made to pay for the privilege of sitting 

 under its shade. 



" No tree was ever so great a favorite with the Romans. They 

 ornamented their villas with it, valuing it above all other trees 

 for the depth of its salutary shade, &c. They nourished it with 

 pure wine ; and Hortensius is related to have begged of his rival, 

 Cicero, to exchange turns with him in a cause in which they 

 were engaged, that he might himself do this office for a tree he 

 had planted in his Tusculanum." 



" Pliny describes some of the most remarkable planes. In the 

 walks of the Academy at Athens were trees whose trunks were 

 about forty-eight feet from the ground to the branches. In his 

 own time there was one in Lycia, near a cool fountain by the road 

 side, with a cavity of eighty-one feet circuit within its trunk, and 

 a forest-like head, and arms like trees overshadowing broad fields. 

 Within this apartment, made by moss-covered stones, to resemble 

 a grotto, Licinius Mucianus thought it a fact worthy of history, 

 that he dined with nineteen companions, and slept there too, not 

 regretting splendid marbles, pictures, and golden-fretted roofs, and 

 missing only the sound of rain drops pattering on the leaves." 5 * 

 * Emerson's Reports. 



