1

drove their posterity into Cambria. From the east to the west, says Gildas and venerable Bede, a fire was lighted up in Britain, equal to that with which the Chaldeans burnt Jerusalem. There was a continued flame from sea to sea. Churches were destroyed; public and private buildings fell in one common ruin; the altars were profaned with blood; priests, bishops, and flocks, were massacred without distinction. Their bodies were scattered; and no one dared to honour them with burial. From this era, tracing the history of the laws and empire to the time of Alfred, the pride, the glory, and the paragon of Nature; and thence to Henry Beauclerk, the Edwards, and the Henries, the memory takes an eager and a rapid survey of the reigns of James and Charles, and William and Anne; till, finishing its excursion, it rests in the contemplation of modern science, art, morals, and manners.

When the mind begins to travel, impossible is it to know in what corner of the world it will finish its excursion.

When we observe stags, wandering at will in a forest, the imagination not unfrequently wafts itself to regions, where the elk ruminates near the Polar circle; or where the rein-deer imparts every comfort of life to the natives of Lapland. Then, by a natural transition, it rests for a while on the ode of the Lapland poet, addressed to the deer, that was wafting him over the snows to the object of his love. Then it reverts to the chamois antelope, feeding before the sun rises, and after it has set, on roots and herbs, covered with snow. Then associating with its diffusive genius, whether in Africa or

1 Ss. 24.

Bede, lib. i. c. 15.

in Asia, a beautiful construction, great speed, and timidity of disposition, we recal with delight the great variety of allusions to them in the Hebrew writings, and the various allegories, formed by the poets of Persia, India, and Arabia. Returning to the forest, whence we had wandered, we observe a multitude of spiders' webs, hanging from bough to bough. A spider, with its instinct, forms a texture, which it defies all other animals to equal, and even the skill of man to surpass. This web is capable of being made into silk: but though every female spider lays six eggs to a silk-worm's one, the work of twelve spiders equalling only that of one silk worm, it requires 27,648 spiders to weave a pound of silk; when it requires only 2,304 silkworms to produce the same quantity. And as forest spiders produce less than house spiders, by a twelfth part, it requires twelve times so many for a similar produce, viz. 331,776. To the cultivation of spiders are objected, that five of their threads only equal in strength one of the worm; that the lustre of its silk is less brilliant; that its natural ferocity is so great, and the love of its fellow for food so ravenous, that out of four or five thousand, distributed into cells, fifty in some and a hundred in others, it was found, in a short time, that the large ones had eaten up all the small ones; insomuch that only one or two were left in each cell.

From the spider to the silk-worm is a natural transition: but it is now time to return, since sufficient data have been presented to prove, that not only the history of a country, but of mankind, and even of the whole universe, material and immaterial, may, by virtue of association, be connected with the smallest leaf of the smallest tree.

44

XVI.

Ives says, in his Voyage to India', that he saw a banyan near Trevandeparum able to shelter ten thousand men; and Dr. Fryer alludes to some so large, as to shade thirty thousand horse and men singly. On an island in the Nerbudda, a few miles from Baroach, grows one more remarkable than any other in India. Travellers call it "the wonder of the vegetable world," being two thousand feet in circumference. Armies may encamp under its branches, and those of its " daughters," which emanate from its roots; forming

shade,

High overarched, with echoing walks between.

In its branches are innumerable pigeons, peacocks, and birds of song. The Hindoos esteem it the symbol of a prolific Deity; and British officers frequently, in their excursions, live many weeks together under its canopy. The capot is the only tree that can be compared with the banyan: and Bosman relates, that he saw one on the Gold Coast of Guinea, which was so large, that it would shade twenty thousand men at least.

4

We may here say a few words relative to the ages of trees. Franklin 5 mentions two cypresses, which the Persians believed to be six hundred years old 6. Chardin

1 P. 199. 4to.

Account of Persia and East India in 1673, &c. p. 105.

3 Major Thorn's Memoir of the War in India, conducted by Lord Lake and Sir A. Wellesley.

6

Pliny mentions several remarkably aged trees. Nat. Hist. xvi.

102 Ant-hills of Sweden ;-Epochs of Architecture.

mentions a plane-tree of a thousand years; Forbes' says, that he smoked his hookha under the very banyan, beneath which part of Alexander's cavalry took shelter; and the age of the oaks of Libanus is said to be at least two thousand years.

In Java are large forests, one of which is fifty miles in extent it consists entirely of bamboos'; forming so thick a canopy, like Gothic arches, that the light of the sun is almost entirely excluded at noon. It is infested by leopards and tigers. The prodigious forests between Vladimir and Arymas, and Petersburgh and Moscow, and those in which the Duna, the Dniper, and the Wolga rise, exhibit some fine scenes of beauty and vegetable grandeur; but the ant-hills in the forests of Sweden are still more wonderful. They are of such a size, that Dr. Clarke could scarcely credit what he saw. They consist of cones, formed by the leaves and fibres of pine, and some of them built even to the height of five feet. On examination of them he could not refrain from observing, that the mansions of the ants, considering the architects, were even more wonderful than the pyramids of Egypt. The forests, in which these ant-hills appear, are very extensive; but the great forest of South America occupies an extent of near 120,000 square leagues 2; being ten times larger than the whole of France.

Does an architect see a long vista of ancient trees, rising, as it were, in columns and meeting at their tops? He meditates on the various epochs of architecture; and on those relics, which still remain in many parts of the

1 Oriental Memoirs.

2 Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol, iv. p. 307.

world. The time of Pericles he witnesses in the ruins of Postum; Agrigentum; Syracuse; the temple at Corinth, and that of Theseus at Athens. For specimens, from the time of Pericles to that of Alexander, he reverts to the Acropolis; the Temple of Esculapius at Epidaurus; and that of Minerva at Tegea. For those, denoting the era between Alexander and Adrian, he visits, in imagination, the Pantheon and the baths of Titus; with the temple and palaces of Palmyra: while in the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian he recognizes the interval from Adrian to Theodoric. Thence, through the long progress of many ages, he traces the outline of the Gothic aisle, bearing such a striking similarity to a close vista of

trees.

From observing a tree, Hipparchus discovered the parallax of the planets: for noting that a tree on a plain, from several situations and distances, changed its apparent position, he determined the real and apparent distances of the planets, when observed from the surface of the earth, and at its centre. And a savage of America was induced to entertain a wider notion of the powers of a Deity, and to believe in his omnipotence, from reflecting that no one could imagine, from its external structure, that an oak sprung from an acorn. To the circumstance of a shrub being torn up by its roots were the Spaniards indebted for the discovery of the mines of Potosi. An Indian, whose name was Hualpa, chancing one day to pursue some deer, climbed over several rocks, down which he was, at last, in great danger of falling. In the struggle to save himself, he caught hold of a bush. His weight loosened the roots, and he was still in danger of falling.