190 



A DISCOURSE 



according to their tradition ; the over-grown Myrtle ; the Vatican and 

 Tiburtine Holm, and especially that near to Tusculum, whose body was 

 thu'ty-five feet about ; besides divers others which he there enumerates in 

 a large chapter. And what shall we conjecture of the age of Xerxes' 

 Platanus, in admiration whereof he staid the march of so many hundred 

 thousand men for so many days ; by which the wise Socrates was used 

 to swear. And certainly a goodly tree was a powerful attractive, when 

 that prudent consul Passienus Crispus, fell in love with a prodigious 

 Beech of a wonderful age and stature, (which he used to sleep under, 

 and would sometimes refresh it with pouring wine at the roots,) and 

 that wise prince Francis I. with an huge Oak, which he caused to be so 

 curiously immured at Bourg.es. 



STATURE. 



We have already made mention of Tiberius's Larch, intended to be 

 employed about the Naumachia, which being one hundi-ed and twenty 

 feet in length, bare two feet diameter nearly all that space, (not counting 

 the top,) and was looked upon as such a wonder, that though it was 

 brought to Rome to be used in that vast fabric, the emperor would 

 have it kept jorop/^r miraculum ; and so it lay unemployed till IS^-o built 

 his amphitheatre. To this might be added the mast of Demetrius's 

 galeasse, which consisted of but one Cedar ; and that of the float which 

 wafted Caligula's obelisks out of Egypt, four fathoms in circumference. 

 We read of a Cedar growing in the Island of Cyprus, which was one 

 hundred and thirty feet long, and eighteen in diameter; and such it seems 

 there are some yet growing on Mount Libanus, (though very few in 

 Jerusalem? p, numbcr,) ouc of which our late traveller, Mr. INIaundrel, * affirms himself 

 to have measured of twelve yards six inches in girt, sound, and at six 

 yards from the ground divided into five limbs, each of which was equal 

 to a great tree. We read also of the Plane in Athens, whose roots 

 extended thirty-six cubits farther than the boughs, which were yet 

 exceedingly large ; and such another was that most famous tree at 

 Velitrse, whose arms stretched out eighty feet from the stem ; but these 

 trees were solid. Let us calculate from the hollow. Besides those 

 mentioned by Pliny, in the Hercynian forest, the Germans had castles 

 in Oaks, and (as now the Indians) some punti or canoes of excavated 

 Oak, which would well contain thirty, some forty persons. Such were 

 the ancient i^o-jo'^iAa, in use yet about Cephalonia, as Sir George Wheeler 

 observed ; and such the A.5pua n),ota used by those of Cyprus. But what 



