The Pine tree, from a very early date, has been by many races looked upon as sacred. It was consecrated in Greece to Poseidon and Dionysius, and as sacred to Zeus was beloved by the Virgins. In the pastorals of Longus, Chloe is adorned with a _Pinea Corona_ as an emblem of virginity, which Daphne takes from her and puts on her own head. "Diana, or maids mix its chaplets with the mastic, as a tree of all others most fruitful, but not with the myrtle, which, as sacred to Venus, may not appear in a professed virgin's wreath." (Forlong.) The position occupied by the tree in Assyria may be seen in Mr. Layard's works, he speaks of it as the "sacred tree" along with the "corner stone." "The corner stone," says Forlong, "is usually considered the principal stone of a building, hence the _principle_ in each religion is called its principal or corner stone, and the fruit of this most sacred tree is the commonest and best gift to the gods. This is probably why we find the tree everywhere, and why the Assyrian priests are usually shown as presenting a pine cone to their gods and altars. The seed cone seems, however, to be at times the cone of Indian corn, but Mr. Layard thinks that the pine or cypress cone is most used in the 'Cult de Venus.' The Thyrsus of Bacchus, we may remember, has a fir cone, and the Bacchic Pole is usually held to be of pine, as very inflammable and odoriferous--it is remarkably like the insignia of Boodhism and of most other faiths, as the Tri-Sool or three thorns of Siva, the tridents of Neptune, and other deities." The pine was supposed by some to be inhabited by wind spirits, like Ariel, owing to the whispering noise proceeding from it in the breeze. The legend was that it was the mistress of Boreas and Pan, an idea acceptable to the German mind in consequence of its holes and knots, which were believed to be the means of ingress and egress for the spirits. It is told that a beautiful woman of Smäland, who was really an elf, left her family through a knot-hole in the wooden house-wall. "Frau Fichte," the pine of Silesia, is believed to possess great healing powers, and its boughs are carried about by the children on Mid-Lent Sunday, adorned with coloured papers and spangles; it is also carried with songs and rejoicing to the doors of stables where it is suspended in the belief that it will preserve the animals from harm. In other parts superstitions equally striking prevail. In Bohemia men think if they eat the kernel of the pine cone from the top of a tree on St. John's Day they will be invulnerable against shot. A writer in "Fraser's Magazine" in 1870, said that he saw sprigs of pine stuck on the railway wagons bearing the German soldiers into France. In some parts of Germany it is quite common for a man subject to gout to climb a pine tree and tie a knot in its highest shoot as a cure for his malady, saying as he does it: "Pine, I bind here the gout that plagues me."