Chap. 30.] 
CITRUS TABLES. 
195 
The largest table that has ever yet been known was one 
that belonged to Ptolemaeus, king of Mauretania ; it was made 
of two semicircumferences joined together down the middle, 
being four feet and a half in diameter, and a quarter of a foot 
in thickness : the most wonderful fact, however, connected 
with it, was the surprising skill with which the joining had 
been concealed,^^ and which rendered it more valuable than if 
it had been by nature a single piece of wood. The largest 
table that is made of a single piece of wood, is the one that 
takes its name from Nomius, a freedman of Tiberius Caesar. 
The diameter of it is four feet, short by three quarters of an 
inch, and it is half a foot in thickness, less the same fraction. 
While speaking upon this subject, I ought not to omit to men- 
tion that the Emperor Tiberius had a table that exceeded four 
feet in diameter by two inches and a quarter, and was an inch 
and a half in thickness : this, however, was only covered with 
a veneer of citrus-wood, while that which belonged to his 
freedman JSTomius was so costly, the whole material of which 
it was composed being knotted wood. 
These knots are properly a disease or excrescence of the 
root, and those used for this purpose are more particularly 
esteemed which have lain entirely concealed under ground ; 
they are much more rare than those that grow above ground, 
and that are to be found on the branches also. Thus, to speak 
correctly, that which we buy at so vast a price is in reality a 
defect in the tree : of the size and root of it a notion may be 
easily formed from the circular sections of its trunk. The 
tree resembles the wild female cypress^"' in its foliage, smell, 
and the appearance of the trunk. A spot called Mount Anco- 
rarius, in JSTearer Mauretania, used formerly to furnish the 
most esteemed citrus-wood, but at the present day the supply 
is quite exhausted. 
CHAP. 30. THE POINTS THAT AEE DESIKABLE OB OTHERWISE IN" 
THESE TABLES. 
The principal merit of these tables is to have veins arranged 
^'^ This is considered nothing remarkable at the present day, such is the 
skill displayed by our cabinet-makers. 
5^ Called "Nomiana." 53 Tuber. 
^ The European Cyprus, the Cupressus seropervirens of Linnieus. 
^5 These veins were nothing in realitv but the lines of the layers or 
o 2 
