Rumford Bridge, Androscoggin River 239 Aroostook Falls 250 FOREST LIFE AND FOREST TREES. PART I. CHAPTER I. Trees, how regarded by Lumbermen.--Cedars of Lebanon.--Oldest Tree on Record.--Napoleon's Regard for it.--Dimensions.--Durability of the Cedar, how accounted for.--The Oak.--Religious Veneration in which it was held by the Druids.--The Uses to which their Shade was appropriated.--Curious Valuation of Oak Forests by the Ancient Saxons.--The Number of Species.--Its Value.--Remarkable old Oak in Brighton.--Charter Oak.--Button-wood Tree.--Remarkable Rapidity of its Growth.--Remarkable Size of one measured by Washington.--by Michaux.--Disease in 1842, '43, and '44.--The Oriental Plane-tree. --Great Favorite with the Ancients.--Cimon's Effort to gratify the Athenians.--Pliny's Account of its Transportation.--The Privilege of its Shade a Tax.--Used as an Ornament.--Nourished with Wine.-- Hortensius and Cicero.--Pliny's curious Account of one of remarkable Size. Lumbermen are accustomed to classify and rate forest trees by the lower, middle, and higher grades, just as animals are classified, from the muscle, through the intermediate grades, up to man, the crowning master-piece of the Creator's skill. But while man is universally recognized as first in the scale of animated nature, there is less uniformity of sentiment in respect to trees, as to which is entitled to hold the first rank in the vegetable kingdom. In the days of King David and Solomon, the noble Cedars of Lebanon held the pre-eminence, and were celebrated in verse as emblems of beauty, grandeur, and especially of durability; but "with the moderns the Cedar is emblematical of sadness and mourning": "Dark tree! still sad when others' grief is fled-- The only constant mourner of the dead."--BYRON. "Perhaps the oldest tree on record is the Cypress of Somma, in Lombardy. It is supposed to have been planted in the year of the birth of Christ, and on that account is looked upon with reverence by the inhabitants; but an ancient chronicle at Milan is said to prove that it was a tree in the time of Julius Cæsar, B.C. 42. It is one hundred and twenty-three feet high, and twenty-three feet in circumference at one foot from the ground. Napoleon, when laying down the plan for his great road over the Simplon, diverged from a straight line to avoid injuring this tree."[1] [1] Mass. Reports.