Many anecdotes are recorded, says Ousley, of holy men who exerted themselves in efforts to abolish the superstition. Thus we read in the History of Saint Valeri, that this pious abbot, having discovered the trunk of a large tree which the rustics zealously worshipped with pagan devotion, immediately directed that it should be destroyed. Notwithstanding such laudable exertions, we learn from Ditmar, an author of the eleventh century, that in his time the people of Ridegast, in Mecklenbourgh, revered a certain gloomy forest and were afraid to touch the trees of which it was composed. Leonard Rubenus, late in the sixteenth century, found Livonia still infected with the idolatrous veneration of trees; for passing through the sacred woods of the Esthonians, he perceived an immense pine, which the neighbouring people adored, loading its branches with pieces of old cloth, and expecting that any injury offered to it would be attended with some miraculous punishment. Rubenus, however, tells us that he cut on this pine the figure of a cross, and, lest the superstition should be thereby augmented, he afterwards marked on it the form of a gibbet, in contempt for the tree, regarded by those rustics as their god. At a much later period this kind of idolatry existed among the same people. Abel Burja, who visited them in 1777, mentions their sacred trees, and relates an anecdote which he heard at Petersburgh from a priest of Finland, whose father had likewise exercised the sacerdotal office in that country, where his parishioners had long honoured a certain tree with religious homage. This worthy pastor, having excited the good humour of those peasants, whom he treated with brandy, exhorted them to cut down the object of their superstitious worship, but they refused to touch it, fearing that on the first application of an axe they should be destroyed by thunderbolt. Their pastor, however, struck it with impunity; encouraged by the brandy, they followed his example, and soon prostrated the ancient tree.[17] CHAPTER IV. _The Bogaha of Ceylon, or God Trees--The Maha Wanse and the Bo-Tree--Ceremonies connected with the Transplantation of the Bo-Tree--Planting the Great Bo-Branch--Miracles of the Bo-Tree--The State Elephant--The Pipal Tree._