BOOK XVI. Lix. 137-LX. 140 



uiifricndly to the laurel, but 110 tree is more frequent 

 on Mount Olympus. In thc city of Kertch in the 

 neighbourhood of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, King 

 Mithridates and the rest of the natives had toiled in 

 every way to have the laurel and the myrtle, at all 

 events for ritual purposes, but they did not succeed, 

 although trees belonging to a mild chmate abound 

 there, pomegranates and figs, as vvell as apples and 

 pears that win the highest praise. In the same 

 region Nature has not produced the trees that belong 

 to cold cUmates — pine, fir and pitch-pine. And what 

 is the point of our going abroad to the Black Sea ? 

 In the actual neighbourhood of Rome chestnuts and 

 cherries only grow with reluctance, and the peach- 

 tree round Tusculum, and almonds are laboriously 

 grown from graft, although Tarracina teems with 

 whole woods of them. 



LX. The cypress is an exotic, and has been one Naturaus- 

 of the most difficult trees to rear, seeing that Cato " %^essf^ 

 has written about it at greater length and more useinfaTicy 

 often than about all the other trees, as stubborn to ^^' 

 grow, of no use for fruit, with berries that cause a 

 wry face, a bitter leaf, and a pungent smell : not 

 even its shade agreeable and its timber scanty, so 

 that it ahnost belongs to the class of shrubs ; con- 

 secrated to Dis, and consequently placed at the doors 

 of houses as a sign of mourning. The female bears 

 seed but the male is sterile.'' For a long time past 

 merely owing to its pyramidal appearance it was not 

 rejected just for the purpose of marking the rows in 

 vineyards, but nowadays it is cHpped and made into 

 thick walls or evenly rounded off with trim slenderness, 

 and it is even made to provide the representations 

 of the landscape gardener's work, arraying hunting 



479 



