168 Gilpin's forest sceneet. 



For tradition assures us, says Pliny, they were 

 the very trees on which that hero observed an 

 ominous flight of birds, and was determined by them 

 in the site of his town. As Tiburtus was the son 

 of Amphiareus, who died at Thebes a hundred years 

 before the Trojan war, these trees, at the lowest 

 calculation, must have been fourteen or fifteen 

 hundred years old in the time of Pliny. Though 

 this is far from being incredible, yet, as it rests 

 wholly on tradition, we pay it the less attention. 

 Wliat Pliny says in favour of the fourth tree, how- 

 ever, has somewhat more of weight. This tree, he 

 tells us, grew in the Vatican, and had its age in- 

 scribed in old Tuscan characters upon its trunk ; 

 from which inscription it appeared that, before 

 the city of Rome had its existence, this Holm 

 was a celebrated tree. 



When Tiberius biailt his naumachia, and had 

 occasion for large beams in several parts of his 

 work, he endeavoured to collect them from the 

 various forests of the empire. Among other 

 massy pieces of timber, which were brought to 

 Rome on this oceasion, the trunk of a Larch was 

 of so prodigious a size, that the emperor, instead 



