S Y L V A 247 



these lower regions, the same God only knows; though 

 certainly for our chastisement ; and therefore reform- 

 ation, submission and patience will become our best 

 security. 



Scaliger the father, affirms, he could never convince 

 his learned antagonist Erasmus, but that trees felt the 

 first stroke of the ax, and discovers a certain resentment: 

 And indeed it seems to hold the edge of the fatal tool, 

 till a wider gap be made : And so exceedingly appre- 

 hensive they are of their destruction, that as Zoroaster 

 says, If a man come with a sharp bill, intending to fell 

 a barren tree, and a friend importunately deprecate 

 the angry person, and prevail with him to spare it, 

 the tree will infallibly bear plentifully the next year: 

 Such is the superstitious sanctity and folly of some 

 credulous people. 



But we were speaking of metamorphoses of one 

 species into another ; as it is said of a platan into an 

 olive-tree, when Xerxes came to Laodicea : And Ly- 

 costhenes talks of a Sambucus that bare grapes, which 

 I believe he mistook for elder-berries. 



Pliny mentions a timber-tree, that being felled, they 

 found it full of stones, the solid wood grown over it : 

 As it happened in Germany : Others (as above noted) 

 that had armour, shields, and weapons invested with 

 the timber of an old oak, which might have, when 

 younger, been hung about it for trophies : But such 

 another was found in Germany, that had the statue of 

 the B. Virgin in the very centre of an aged oak of eight 

 foot diameter, as John Burgosius affirms, and that the 

 place where the tree stood was turned into a chappel 

 near Dinand ad Mosam, famous for miracles: See his 

 book de parturitwne B. M. Virg. 



15. We might here indeed produce the wonderful 



