390 APPENDIX D. 



from the Cape Colony, Natal, and Madagascar, and which differ 

 in having alternate leaves and many ovules to each scale. 



The great interest attached to this plant arises from the 

 beauty and durability of the wood, which, there is every reason 

 to believe, was known to the ancients from the earliest times, 

 under the name of Thuja. It is thus hypothetically, but pro- 

 bably correctly, identified with the dv'iov ' of the Odyssey (ii. 6), , 

 with the Ov'iot' and Ovia of Theophrastus (' Hist. PI.' v. 5), and 

 the thyine wood of the Revelations (xviii. 12). It is un- 

 doubtedly the Citrus wood of the Eomans, and the Alerce of 

 the Spaniards ; the latter name being derived from the Moors 

 of Marocco, for it is not a native of Spain. 



The first botanical notice of the Callitris is in Shaw's 

 ' Travels in Barbary,' where it is figured and briefly described as 

 Thuja articulata (462); and for its identification with the 

 Alerce we are indebted to the late Mr. Drummond Hay when 

 Consul of Tangier, who, further, sent a plank of the wood to the 

 Royal Horticultural Society.^ At about the same time, the at- 

 tention of a most intelligent traveller, the late Capt. S. E. Cook 

 (afterwards Widdrington), was attracted by the wood of the 

 cathedral of Cordova (formerly a mosqne built by the Moors in 

 the ninth century) called Alerce, which difiered from any 

 Spanish wood, or any other wood now used in Spain. Coupling 

 this name with the communication made by Mr. Drummond 

 Hay to the Horticultural Society, Capt. Cook was enabled to 

 identify the Cordova wood' with the Callitris, which, as he 

 assumes, was brought from Marocco, to roof a mosque intended 

 to be second in sanctity only to that of Mecca. 



Except in a garden at Tangier, we saw no specimen of the 

 Callitiis approaching a large size, or capable of yielding the 

 beams which we were shown in the ceilings and roofs of build- 

 ings in that town and elsewhere, and which are considered to 

 be indestructible. On the contrary, most of the native speci- 

 mens we saw in Southern Marocco resembled small Cypresses, 

 with very sparse foKage and branches, and were apparently 



' It is mentioned under this name by Homer In his description of 

 the Island of Calypso. See Daubeny O/i the Trees and Shrubs of the 

 Aiioienis, p. 42. 



^ See Cook's Shetches in Spain, vol. i. p, 5 (1831) ; and Loudon's 

 GarAemfs Magazine, Ser, ii. vol. iii, p. 522, 



