CBLBBEATED TREES, 167 



would say, to dine in its trunk on a sultry- 

 summer day ; and to hear a heavy shower of rain 

 descending through the several stages of its 

 leaves. As a naturalist, he left it on record that 

 himself and eighteen other persons dined com- 

 modiously around the benches in the body of it. 



Caligula had a tree of the same kind at his villa 

 near Velitrge. But Caligula's tree appears to 

 have been more complex than the Lycian Plane. 

 It had not only a hollow cave in its trunk, which 

 was capable of holding fifteen persons at dinner, 

 Avith a proper suit of the emperor's attendants ; 

 but, if I understand Pliny rightly,* it had stories 

 also (probably artificial flooring) in the boughs of 

 the tree. Caligula used to call it, his nest. 



From the same author we have an account of 

 four Holm Trees,t still existing in his time, which 

 were of great antiquity. Three of them, he says, 

 stood upon the site of the ancient Tibur, which 

 was a city older than Rome ; and these trees were 

 not only older than Tibur, but were trees of con- 

 sequence in the days of Tiburtus, who founded it. 



* Lib. xii. c. 1. f Lib. xvi. c. 44. 



