THE LARCH. 



399 



In its native haunts, however, the Alps, and 

 other mountains of central Europe, it occupies 

 an important position, growing abundantly in the 

 chasms and ravines, especially on the north sides 

 of the mountains, and striving to impart to these 

 lonely regions the solemn character with which 

 the Silver Fir clothes the south. It here rises to 

 the height of eighty or a hundred feet, with a 

 trunk from three to four feet in diameter. As it 

 grows naturally on the Appennines it was known 

 to the Romans, and is repeatedly mentioned by 

 Pliny as a lofty deciduous tree, valuable for the 

 strength and durability of its timber, but worth- 

 less as fuel, its wood being not convertible into 

 charcoal, and as uninflammable as a stone. We 

 read," says Evelyn, of beams of no less than an 

 hundred and twenty feet in length, made out of 

 this goodly tree, which is of so strange a com- 

 position that it will hardly burn. Yet the coals 

 thereof were held far better than any other for 

 the melting of iron, and the locksmith. There 

 is abundance of this Larch timber in the buildings 

 at Venice, especially about the palaces in Piazza 

 San Marco. Nor did they only use it in houses, 

 but in naval architecture also. The ship men- 

 tioned by Witsen to have been found not long 

 since in the Numidian Sea, twelve fathoms under 

 water, was chiefly built of this timber and 

 Cypress, both reduced to that induration and 

 hardness as greatly to resist the fire and the 

 sharpest tool; nor was anything perished of it, 

 though it had lain above a thousand and four hun- 

 dred years submerged. Tiberius, we find, built 

 that famous bridge to his Naumachia with this 

 wood ; and it seems to excel for beams, doors. 



