192 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK III. six yards in diameter near the ground, which it is conjectured has been 

 "^^^^'"^^ so improved by raising an earthen bank, or seat, about it, which has 



caused it to put forth into spurs, it not being so considerable in the 



higher trunk. 



Compare me, then, with these that nine-fathom deep tree spoken of by 

 Josephus Acosta ; the Mastick-tree, seen and measured by Sir Francis 

 Drake, which was four and thirty yards in circuit ; those of Nicaragua 

 and Gambra, which seventeen persons could hardly embrace : among 

 these may come in the Cotton-tree described by Dampier. In India, 

 says Pliny, Arhores tantce proceritatis traduntur, ut sagittis superjaci 

 nequeant ; and adds, (which I think material, and therefore, add also,) 

 Hcec facit ubertas soli, temperies coeli, et aquarum ahundantia. Such were 

 those trees in Corsica, and near Memphis, recorded by Theophrastus, &c. 

 and for prodigious height, the two and three hundred feet unparalleled 

 Palms Royal described by capt. Ligon, growing in our plantations of the 

 Barbadoes ; or those goodly masts of Fir, which I have seen and mea- 

 sured, brought from New England ; and what Bembus relates of those 

 twenty-fathomed antarctic trees ; or those of which Cardan writes, 

 called Ceiba, which rising in their several stems each of twenty feet in 

 compass, and as far distant each from other, unite in the bole at fifteen 

 feet height from the ground, composing three stately arches, and thence 

 ascending in a shaft of prodigious bulk and altitude. Such trees of 

 thirty-seven feet diameter, an incredible thing, Scaliger (his antagonist) 

 speaks of, ad Gamh7'(s Jluvium. Matthiolus mentions a tree growing in 

 the Island of Cyprus, which contained one hundred and thirty feet high 

 sound timber : and upon Mount iEtna, in Sicily, is a place called by 

 them Gli tre Castagne, from three Chestnut-trees there standing, where 

 in the cavity of one, yet remaining, a considerable flock of sheep is com- 

 monly folded. Kircher's words are these, as seen by himself: Et quod for- 

 san TTapa^o^ov videri poss 'd, ostendit milii vice dux, unius Castanece corticem 

 tantce ampUtudinuSy ut intra earn integer pecorum grex a pastor thus, tan- 

 quam incaula commodissima, noctu induderetur. China Illust. p. 185. But 

 this, as I remember, was lately ruined by the direful conflagration about 

 Catanea™. And what may we conceive of those trees in the Indies, one 



The eruption of Mount iEtna that, in the year I669, overwhelmed the city of Catanea, 

 did not destroy any of these memorable Chestnut-trees^ as Mr. Evelyn supposes. They are 



