Latin Texts & Translations

Having now made mention of the more remarkable trees, it remains for me to state some general facts connected with them all. The cedar, the larch, the torch-tree, and the other resinous trees prefer mountainous localities: ^[Note] the same is the case also with the aquifolia, the box, the holm-oak, the juniper, the terebinth, the poplar, the wild mountain-ash, and

the yoke-elm. ^[Note] On the Apennines there is also found a shrub known as the "cotinus," ^[Note] famous for imparting to cloth a purple colour like that of the murex. The fir, the robur, the chesnut, the lime, the holm-oak, and the cornel will grow equally well on mountain or in valley; while the maple, ^[Note] the ash, the service, the linden, and the cherry, more particularly prefer a watery spot on the slope of a hilly declivity. It is not often that we see the plum, the pomegranate, the olive, the walnut, the mulberry, or the elder, growing on an elevated site: the cornel, too, the hazel, the quercus, the wild ash, the maple, the ash, the beech, and the yoke-elm, descend to the plains; while the elm, the apple, the pear, the laurel, the myrtle, the blood-red ^[Note] shrub, the holm-oak, and the brooms ^[Note] that are employed in dyeing cloths, all of them aspire to a more elevated locality.

The sorb, ^[Note] and even still more the birch ^[Note] are fond of a cold site; this last is a native of Gaul, of singular whiteness and slender shape, and rendered terrible as forming the fasces of the magistracy. From its flexibility it is employed also in making circlets and the ribs of panniers. In Gaul, ^[Note] too, they extract a bitumen from it by boiling. To a cold site, also, belongs the thorn, which affords the most auspicious torches ^[Note]

of all for the nuptial ceremony; from the circumstance, as Massurius assures us, that the shepherds, on the occasion of the rape of the Sabine women, made their torches of the wood of this tree: at the present day, however, the woods of the yoke-elm and the hazel are more generally employed for this purpose.