188 



A DISCOURSE 



I500K III. longer lived than the shorter ; the dry than the wet; and the gummy 

 ""^^"^ than the watery ; the sterile than the fruitful : I do not conclude from 

 Pliny's Hercynian Oaks, or the Turpentine-tree of Idumjea, which 

 Josephus ranks also with the creation. I mentioned a Cypress, yet 

 remaining somewhere in Persia near an old sepulchre, whose stem is as 

 large as five men can encompass, the boughs extending fifteen paces 

 every way ; this must needs be a very old tree, believed by my author 

 little less than two thousand five hundred years of age. Of such another. 

 Dr. Spon, in his voyage into Greece, speaks, which, by its spreading, 

 seems to be of the Savine kind ; and, in truth, as to the age and duration, 

 Cypress, Cedar, Box, Ebony, Brasil, and other exceedingly hard and com- 

 pact (with some resinous) woods, growing chiefly in both East and West 

 Indies, must needs be of wonderful age. The particulars were too long 

 to recount of the old Platanus set by Agamemnon, mentioned by 

 Theophrastus, the Herculean Oaks, the Laurel near Hippocrene, the 

 Vatican Ilex, and the Vine which was grown to that bulk and woodiness 

 as to make a statue of Jupiter, and columns in Juno's temple : at present 

 it is found that the great doors of the Cathedral at Ravenna are made of 

 such Vine-tree planks, some of which are twelve feet long, and fifteen 

 inches broad, the whole soil of that country producing Vines of prodigious 

 growth. Such another, in INIargiana, is spoken of by Strabo, that was 

 twelve feet in circumference. Pliny mentions one of six hundred years 

 old in his time ; and at Ecoan, the late Duke of Montmorency's house, 

 is a table of a very large dimension, made of the like plant ; and that 

 which renders it the more strange, is, that a tree growing in such 

 a wreathed and twisted manner, rather like a rope than timber, and 

 needing the support of others, should arrive to such a bulk and firm con- 

 sistence ; but so it is, and Olearius affirms, that he found many Vines 

 near the Caspian Sea, whose trunks were as big about as a man. And 

 the old Lotus-trees, recorded by Valerius Maximus, and the Quercus 

 INIariana, celebrated by the prince of orators, Pliny's huge Larix, and 

 what grew in the Fortunate Islands, with that enormous tree Scaliger 

 reports was growing in the Troglodytic India, were famous for their age. 

 St. Hierom affirms he saw the Sycamore that Zaccheus climbed up, to 

 behold our Lord ride in triumph to Jerusalem : but that's nothing for 

 age to the Olive under which our blessed Saviour agonized, still remain- 

 ing, as they say, in the garden to which he used to resort. At the same 

 rate, Surius tells of other Olive-trees at Nazareth, and of the cursed Fig- 



