Touching the diüternity of this material, ’tis recorded, that in the temple of Apollo Utica, there was found timber of near two thousand years old; and at Sagunti in Spain, a beam in a certain oratory consecrated to Diana, which has been brought to Zant, two centuries before the destruction of Troy: That great Sesostris King of Egypt had built a vessel of cedar of 280 cubits, all over gilded without and within: And the Goddess in the famous Ephesine temple, was said to be of this material also, as was most of the timber-work of that glorious structure: Though as to the idol τοῦ Διοπετοῦς mention’d in the Acts, (when the mob rose up against the apostle) some will have to be of ebony, others of a vine-tree, the most unlikely of all the rest fit for the carver. The _sittim_ mention’d in Holy Writ, is thought to have been a kind of cedar of which most precious utensils were formed. As to the magnitude of cedar-trees: We read of divers whose bodies eight or nine persons could not embrace, (as we shall shew hereafter) not here to let pass what Josephus relates Solomon planted in Judea, who doubtless try’d many experiments of this nature, none being more kingly than of planting for posterity: I do not speak of those growing on the mountains of Libanon, in the northern and colder tracts of Syria; or what store those forests of them then afforded: But, as we are inform’d by that curious traveller{258:1} Ranwolsius, (since confirm’d also by the _virtuoso_, Monconys) there were not remaining above twenty five of those stately trees, and since they were there, but sixteen of that small number, as the ingenious Mr. Mandevill reports in his journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem: There was yet, he says, abundance of young trees, and a single old one of prodigious size, twelve yards and six inches in the girth; I suppose the same describ’d by the late traveller Bruyn, who speaking of the shadow of this umbragious tree, alludes to that of Hosea, Cap. XIV. Ver. 5. which ’tis not improbable might be one of those yet remaining, where that heroick prince employ’d fourscore thousand hewers at work, for the materials of one only temple, and the palace he built in the city; a pregnant instance what time, negligence and war will bring to ruin. But to return to what is said of their present number, Le Bruyn (whom just now we mention’d) makes them 35 or 36, for he could not exactly tell, and pretends (like our Stonedge on Salisbury Plain) none could ever yet agree of their number.