LARCH TREE. 



203 



or rain. These roofs are, however, very combustible, 

 and great damage has been done by fire in villages so 

 built, on which account the people are obliged by law to 

 build the houses at a certain given distance, one from 

 the other. 



Larch wood has been supposed by many persons to be 

 impenetrable by fire ; and a story is related of a castle 

 besieged by Cgesar, w^hich, from the liberal use of Lai'ch, 

 was, at least, verv difficult to consume. Evelyn quotes 

 from Caesar the follo-uang words, which are sufficiently 

 decisive : 



'''Et robusta larix, igiii impenetrabile lignum." 

 " And the strong larch wood^ which fire cannot penetrate." 



There appears to be some truth in the notion that it 

 will long resist fire, turning black long before it takes the 

 flame. Several bridges were built of tliis timber by Ti- 

 berius, some think on this account. The forum of Au- 

 gustus, at Rome, was built with it ; and Vitruvius re- 

 gretted that there was not a greater plenty of it to make 

 joists. Evelyn says, it is so transparent, that when cabins 

 made of the thin boards have lighted candles in them in 

 the darkness of night, people at a distance would imagine 

 them to be on fire. This witer also mentions a ship 

 found some years since in the Numidian Sea, twelve 

 fathoms under water, which was chiefly built of Larch 

 and c\^ress, so hardened, as long to resist the fire or the 

 sharpest tool. " Nor had any part of it perished,'"' says 

 he, " though it had lain upwards of fourteen hundi'ed 

 years submerged.'' 



" Larch v>^ood,"" says Dr. Anderson, " is possessed of 

 so many valuable quahties, that to enumerate the whole 

 would appear extravagant hyperbole. To say much in a 



