62 FAMILIAR TREES 



at least in part ; and it is related that the doors of 

 St. Peter's, made of this wood, lasted without decay 

 from the time of Constantine to that of Pope 

 Eugenius IV. in the fifteenth century. Evelyn 

 mentions many uses to which the wood was put : 



' What," he says, " the uses of this timber are for chests and 

 other utensils, harps, and divers other musical instruments (it being 

 a sonorous wood, and therefore employed for organ-pipes, as hereto- 

 fore for supporters of vines, poles, and planks, resisting the worm, 

 moth, and all putrefaction, to eternity), the Venetians sufficiently 

 understood, who did every twentieth year, and oftener (the Romans 

 every thirteenth), make a considerable revenue of it out of Candy. 

 . . There was in Candy a vast wood of these trees, belonging to 

 the republic, by malice or accident, or, perhaps, by solar heat (as 

 were many woods, seventy-four years after, here in England), set on 

 fire ; which, beginning 1400, continued burning seven years before 

 it could be extinguished ; being fed by the unctuous nature of the 

 timber, of which there were to be seen at Venice planks above four 

 feet broad." 



There can be little doubt that the Cypress was 

 originally a native of Asia Minor, and probably also 

 of the island of Cyprus, from which it almost cer- 

 tainly derives its name. It may perhaps be doubted 

 how far the legends versified by Ovid in his " Meta- 

 morphoses " are due to original mj'thologising by the 

 poet on his own account, and how far they represent 

 popular belief; but the story of the origin of the 

 Cypress, according to Ovid, is somewhat as follows : 

 A beautiful deer, a pet of Apollo's, used to come 

 every day to be fed either by the god or by his faith- 

 ful attendant, a youth named Cyparissus ; but one 

 day, as it came bounding from the forest towards 

 Cyparissus, he, by mischance, killed it with a javelin 

 which he was hurling in sport. So great was the 



