The belief in a future existence doubtless led to the custom of planting trees on tombs, especially the Cypress, which was regarded as typical both of life and death. The tree growing over the grave, one can easily imagine, was looked upon by the ancient races as an emblem of the soul of the departed become immortal. Evelyn remarks, on this point, that trees and perennial plants are the most natural and instructive hieroglyphics of our expected resurrection and immortality, and that they conduce to the meditation of the living, and the removal of their cogitations from the sphere of vanity and worldliness. This observant writer descants upon the predilection exhibited by the early inhabitants of the world for burial beneath trees, and points out that the venerable Deborah was interred under an Oak at Bethel, and that the bones of Saul and his three sons were buried under the Oak at Jabesh-Gilead. He tells us also that one use made by the ancients of sacred groves was to place in their nemorous shades the bodies of their dead: and that he had read of some nations whose people were wont to hang, not only malefactors, but also their departed friends, and those whom they most esteemed, upon trees, as being so much nearer to heaven, and dedicated to God; believing it far more honourable than to be buried in the earth. He adds that “the same is affirmed of other septentrional people;” and points out that Propertius seems to allude to some such custom in the following lines:-- “The gods forbid my bones in the high road Should lie, by every wand’ring vulgar trod; Thus buried lovers are to scorn expos’d, My tomb in some bye-arbor be inclos’d.” The ancients were wont to hang their criminals either to barren trees, or to those dedicated to the infernal gods; and we find that in Maundevile’s time the practice of hanging corpses on trees existed in the Indies, or, at any rate, on an island which he describes as being called Caffolos. He gives a sketch of a tree, probably a Palm, with a man suspended from it, and remarks that “Men of that Contree, whan here Frendes ben seke, thei hangen hem upon Trees; and seyn, that it is bettre that briddes, that ben Angeles of God, eten hem, than the foul Wormes of the Erthe.” [Illustration: The Tree of Death. From _Maundevile’s Travels_.]