CYPRESS TREE. 193 



made of cypress wood; and that when he 

 wrote it was perfectly sound, although it had 

 been dedicated and consecrated to the temple 

 since the second year of the foundation of 

 Rome. Theophrastus, who calls this tree 

 Kviraptlros, tells us, that the doors of the cele- 

 brated temple of Ephesus were formed of 

 this durable wood ; and every body knows 

 that the doors of St. Peter's church, at Rome, 

 were framed of cypress timber, which lasted 

 from Constantine to Pope Eugenius IV.'s 

 time, which was eleven hundred years, and 

 were then sound and entire, when the pope 

 took them down to change them for bronze 

 gates. The Egyptians kept their mummies 

 in chests of cypress wood ; and Thucydides, 

 a Greek historian, who wrote about 400 years 

 before the birth of Christ, tells that the 

 Athenians used to bury their heroes in coffins 

 formed of this timber ; and Aristocles, the 

 celebrated Athenian philosopher, (who was 

 called Plato, from the largeness of his 

 shoulders), and who flourished about the 

 same time with Thucydides, would have the 

 laws and sacred rites inscribed on tablets of 

 cypress wood in preference to brass. 



The Babylonian history affirms, that the 

 lasting bridge, which Semiramis caused to be 

 built over the Euphrates, about 1960 before 



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