But it is not in the relics of ancient worship only that traces of the Dryads are now to be found. The traveller in Greece will commonly hear that such and such a tree is haunted by a Nereid. Particularly famous in North Arcadia is a magnificent pine-tree on the path from the monastery of Megaspélaeon to the village of Solos. My muleteer enthusiastically compared it to the gigantic tree which is believed to uphold the world; and piously crossed himself, as we passed it, for fear of the nymph who made it her home. In general the trees thus reputed are the fruit-bearing trees which were comprehensively denoted by the term δρῦς, from which the Dryads took their name--the fig-tree, the olive, the holly-oak[391], and the plane. Such trees, especially when conspicuous for age or for luxuriance, are readily suspected to be the abode of Nereids. One Nereid only, it would seem, is assigned to each tree (though, if her retreat be violated, she may swiftly call others of her kind to aid her in taking vengeance), and with the life of the tree her own life is bound up. For a nymph is not immortal. Her span of life far exceeds that of man, but none the less it is measured. ‘A crow lives twice as long as a man, a tortoise twice as long as a crow, and a Nereid twice as long as a tortoise.’ Such is a popular saying which I heard from an unlettered peasant of Arcadia, to whom evidently had been transmitted orally through many centuries a version of Hesiod’s lines, ‘Verily nine times the age of men in their prime doth the croaking raven live; and a stag doth equal four ravens; and ’tis three lives of a stag ere the crow grows old; but the phoenix hath the life of nine crows; and ye, fair-tressed Nymphs, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, do live ten times the phoenix’ age[392].’ Commenting on this passage, Plutarch takes the word γενεά in the phrase ἐννέα γενεὰς ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων, which I have rendered as ‘nine times the age of men in their prime,’ to be used as the equivalent of ἐνιαυτός, a year; and, making a sober computation on this basis, discovers that the limit of life for nymphs and _daemones_ in general is 9720 years. But he then admits that the mass of men do not allow so long a duration, and quotes by way of illustration a phrase from Pindar, νύμφας ... ἰσοδένδρου τέκμωρ αἰῶνος λαχούσας, according to which the nymphs are allotted a term of life commensurate with that of a tree; hence, it is added, the compound name Ἁμαδρυάδες, Dryads whose lives are severally bound up with those of the trees which they inhabit[393]. Other ancient authorities concur. Sophocles markedly calls the nymphs of Mt Cithaeron ‘long-lived’ (μακραιῶνες), not ‘immortal’[394]: Pliny certifies the finding of dead Nereids on the coasts of Gaul during the reign of Augustus[395]: Tzetzes cites from the works of Charon of Lampsacus the story of an Hamadryad who was in danger of being swept away and drowned by a swollen mountain-torrent[396]: and, to revert to yet earlier authority,