TREES AND TREES. 99 
Virgil tells us that Eneas was allowed to build his ships 
of the pines from this forest, and that when the Latians 
attempted to burn them before Italy, Venus changed 
them tc nymphs, and they sailed away into the air. 
At the marriage of Jupiter and Juno the most noted 
gift to the bride was a tree laden with golden fruit. 
Many people have regarded the oak as sacred. The 
Druids offered sacrifices in oak groves, and consulted 
these trees in their worships; hence, perhaps, the name 
Quercus, from quero, to seek. 
If we may believe the poets who wrote of these 
things, trees occupy no inconspicuous place in the land 
of spirits. When Dante and Virgil crossed the river 
Styx, they found tangled and matted forests of brown 
foliaged trees, each tree a living spirit undergoing pen- 
ance for crimes committed against self, and although it 
was the lightest form of punishment in all these “ cir- 
cles” of misery, yet lamentations were issuing from 
them. Dante says: “We had put ourselves within a 
wood that was not marked by any path whatever; not 
foliage green, but of a dusky color; not branches 
smooth, but gnarled and intermingled. Therefore the 
Master said: ‘If thou break off some little spray from 
any of these trees, the thought thou hast will wholly be 
made vain.’ Then stretched I forth my hand a little 
forward and plucked a branchlet off from a great thorn, 
and the trunks cried: ‘Why dost thou mangle me? 
why dost thou rend me? hast thou no pity whatsoever ? 
Men once we were, now changed to trees.’” But as 
they ascended up through Purgatorio to Paradiso they 
