Belonging to this last class, there are the following trees which do not lose their leaves: the olive, the laurel, the palm, the myrtle, the cypress, the pine, the ivy, the rhododendron,[2424] and, although it may be rather called a herb than a tree, the savin.[2425] The rhododendron, as its name indicates, comes from Greece. By some it is known as the nerium,[2426] and by others as the rhododaphne. It is an evergreen, bearing a strong resemblance to the rose-tree, and throwing out numerous branches from the stem; to beasts of burden, goats, and sheep it is poisonous, but for man it is an antidote[2427] against the venom of serpents. (21.) The following among the forest-trees do not lose their leaves: the fir, the larch, the pinaster, the juniper, the cedar, the terebinth, the box, the holm-oak, the aquifolia, the cork, the yew, and the tamarisk.[2428] A middle place between the evergreens and those which are not so, is occupied by the andrachle[2429] in Greece, and by the arbutus[2430] in all parts of the world; as they lose all their leaves with the exception of those on the top of the tree. Among certain of the shrubs, too, the bramble and the calamus, the leaves do not fall. In the territory of Thurii, where Sybaris formerly stood, from the city there was a single oak[2431] to be seen that never lost its leaves, and never used to bud before midsummer: it is a singular thing that this fact, which has been so often alluded to by the Greek writers, should have been passed over in silence by our own.[2432] Indeed, so remarkable are the virtues that we find belonging to some localities, that about Memphis in Egypt, and at Elephantina in Thebais, the leaves[2433] fall from none of the trees, not the vine even. CHAP. 34. (22.)—THE NATURE OF THE LEAVES WHICH WITHER AND FALL. All the trees, with the exception of those already mentioned—a list which it would be tedious to enumerate—lose their leaves, and it has been observed that the leaf does not dry up and wither unless it is thin, broad, and soft; while, on the other hand, the leaves that do not fall are those which are fleshy, thick, and narrow.[2434] It is an erroneous theory that the leaf does not fall in those trees the juices of which are more unctuous than the rest; for who could make out that such is the case with the holm-oak, for instance? Timæus, the mathematician, is of opinion that the leaves fall while the sun is passing through the sign of Scorpio, being acted upon by the influences of that luminary, and a certain venom which exists in the atmosphere: but then we have a right to wonder how it is that, the same reasons existing, the same influence is not exercised equally on all.