were made) were of this sort of wood (as some doubt not to assert) we should esteem it at another rate; yet we know Josephus affirms they were a kind of pine-tree, though somewhat resembling the fig-tree wood to appearance, as of a most lustrous candor. In the 2 _Chron._ 2, 8. there is mention of almug-trees to grow in Lebanon; and if so, methinks it should rather be (as Buxtorf thinks) a kind of cedar; (yet we find fir also in the same period) for we have seen a whiter sort of it, even very white as well as red; though some affirm it to be but the sap of it (so our cabinet-makers call it) I say, there were both fir and pine-trees also growing upon those mountains, and the learned Meibomius, (in that curious treatise of his _De Fabrica Triremium_) shews that there were such trees brought out of India, or Ophir. In the mean time, Mr. Purchas informs us, that Dr. Dee writ a laborious treatise almost wholly of this subject, (but I could never have the good hap to see it) wherein, as commissioner for Solomon’s timber, and like a learned architect and planter, he has summon’d a jury of twelve sorts of trees; namely, 1. the fir, 2. box, 3. cedar, 4. cypress, 5. ebony, 6. ash, 7. juniper, 8. larch, 9. olive, 10. pine, 11. oak, and 12. sandal-trees, to examine which of them were this _almugim_, and at last seems to concur with Josephus, in favour of pine or fir; who possibly, from some antient record, or fragment of the wood it self, might learn something of it; and ’tis believ’d, that it was some material both odoriferous to the scent, and beautiful to the eye, and of fittest temper to refract sounds; besides its serviceableness for building; all which properties are in the best sort of pine or _thyina_, as Pliny calls it; or perhaps some other rare wood, of which the Eastern Indies are doubtless the best provided; and yet I find, that those vast beams which sustain’d the roof of St. Peter’s church at Rome, laid (as reported) by Constantine the Great, were made of the pitch-tree, and have lasted from _anno_ 336, down to our days, above 1300 years.