112 



SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



" However that may be,'^ observes Martyn, " the 

 Cypress is valuable on account of its wood, which is 

 of a dusky or brownish red colour ; has a sweet smell, 

 and, on account of its hardness, is fit for a variety of 

 purposes."" 



On account of its durability, Plato had the laws en- 

 graved on Cypress tablets, in preference to brass itself ; 

 and Pliny relates, that the statue of Jupiter in the 

 Capitol, made of this wood in the year of Rome 661, 

 was sound in his time. 



" What the uses of this timber are,^' says Evelyn, 

 " for chests and other utensils, harps, and divers other 

 musical instruments (it being a sonorous wood, and 

 therefore employed for organ-pipes, as heretofore for 

 supporters of vines, poles and planks, resisting the worm, 

 moth, and all putrefaction, to eternity), the Venetians 

 sufficiently understood, who did every twentieth year, 

 and oftener (the Romans every thirteenth), make a con- 

 siderable revenue of it out of Candy : and certainly a 

 very gainful commodity it was, when the fell of a Cu- 

 pressetum (plantation of Cypresses) was heretofore re- 

 puted a good daughter's portion, and the plantation itself 

 called Dos filics. But there was in Candy a vast wood 

 of these trees belonging to the republic, by malice or 

 accident (or perhaps by solar heat, as were many woods 

 seventy-four years after, even here in England) set on 

 fire : which beginning anno 1400, continued burning for 

 seven years before it could be extinguished, being fed 

 for so long a space by the unctuous nature of the timber, 

 of which there Vv^ere to be seen at Venice planks of above 

 four feet in breadth. And formerly the valves of St. 

 Peter's Church were formed of this material, which lasted 

 from the great Constantine to Pope Eugenius the Fourth's 



