OF FOREST-TREES. 33 



which beginning anno 1400, continued burning for seven years before CHAP. I. 

 it could be quite extinguished, being fed for so long a space by the ^-"""V"^ 

 unctuous nature of the timber, of which there were to be seen at Venice 

 planks of about four feet in breadth : and formerly the valves of 

 St. Peter's church at Rome were framed of this material, which lasted 

 from the great Constantine to Pope Eugenius IVth's time (eleven 

 hundred years) and then were found as fresh and entire as if they had 

 been new. But this Pope would needs change them for gates of brass, 

 which were cast by the famous Antonio Philarete ; not, in my opinion, 

 so venerable as those of Cypress. It was in coffins of this material that 

 (as Thucydides teUs us) the Athenians used to bury their heroes : and 

 the mummy-chests brought with those condited bodies out of Egypt, are 

 many of them of this material, which, it is probable, may have lain in 

 those dry and sandy crypt£e many thousand years. 



11. The timber of this wood was of infinite esteem with the ancients. 

 That lasting bridge built over the Euphrates by Semiramis, was made 

 of this material ; and it is reported, Plato chose it to wi'ite his laws on, 

 before brass itself, for the diuturnity of the matter. It is certain that 

 it never rifts or cleaves but with great violence ; and the bitterness of its 

 juice preserves it from worms and putrefaction. To this day those of 

 Crete and IVIalta make use of it for their buildings, because they have 

 it in plenty ; and there is nothing outlasts it, or can be more beautiful, 

 especially the root of the wilder sort, incomparable for its crisped undu- 

 lations. Divers learned persons have conceived the Gopher mentioned 

 in holy writ, Gen. vi. 14, (and of which the ark was built,) to have been 

 no other than this KuTraptao-o?, Cupar, or Cuper, by the easy mutation of 

 letters. Aben Ezra names it a Ught wood apt to swim ; so does David 

 Kimchi, which rather seems to agree with Fir or Pine, and such as the 

 Greeks call ?uAa Terpa-ycova, quadrangular trees, about which critics have 

 made a deal of stir ; but Isa. Vossius, on the LXX. cap. xi. has suf- 

 ficiently made it out, that the timber of that denomination was of those 

 sort of trees whose branches break out just opposite to one another at 

 right angles, which makes it appear to have been Fir, or some sort 

 of wood whose arms grow in an uniform manner ; but surely this is not 

 to be universally taken, since we find that Yew, and divers other trees, 

 brittle, heavy, and unapt for shipping, do often put forth in that order, 

 The same learned author will have Gopher to signify only pitch or 



