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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Homer frequently mentions "the shady plane." It 

 was dedicated by the Greeks to the beautiful Helen, 

 and it is said that the bridal wreath which she wore 

 on the occasion of her marriage with Menelaus was 

 partly composed of the catkins of this tree. 



Theocritus, a poet who flourished 282 B.C., repre- 

 sents the virgins of Sparta introducing the plane in 

 the Epithalamium or marriage song of their princesses, 



thus — 



" Reverence me, for I am the tree of Helen." 



One Persian monarch, Xerxes, when invading 

 Greece with his prodigious army, appears to have 

 lost his reason at the sight of one of these magnificent 

 trees he found in Phrygia. He compelled his army 

 to encamp in the neighbourhood, whilst he adorned 

 the tree with all the jewels belonging to himself, his 

 concubines, and the principal men of his court, until 

 the branches were loaded with gems, necklaces, 

 bracelets, and ornaments of every kind. He called it 

 his mistress and his goddess, and it was some days 

 before he could be prevailed on to leave the tree of 

 which he was so enamoured, and even then he caused 

 a figure of it to be stamped on a gold medal which he 

 constantly wore about him. Herodotus relates that 

 he encircled this favourite tree with a collar of gold, 

 and confided the charge of it to one of the ten thou- 

 sand. It is said that the delay occasioned by this 

 foolish freak was one of the causes of his defeat. 



The Greeks named this tree Platysample, in allusion 

 to its spreading branches and shady foliage. In Athens 

 the plane was planted near all the public schools ; the 

 shady walks round the Gymnasia and public buildings, 

 the grove of Academus in which Plato delivered his 

 celebrated discourses, were formed of this tree. 

 Socrates swore by the plane instead of by the gods, 

 and this offended Melitus, one of the philosopher's 

 principal accusers, who declared it was a great crime 

 to swear by so beautiful a tree. 



The Romans named this tree Platanus from the 

 Greeks, and they appear to have held it in equal 

 veneration with their more Eastern neighbours. They 

 planted the public and academic walks of their 

 imperial city with it. When first introduced into 

 Rome it was cultivated, with much industry and great 

 cost, by their orators and statesmen ; we are told 

 that Cicero and Hortensius would exchange now and 

 then a turn at the Bar, that they might step to their 

 handsome villas and irrigate the roots of these favour- 

 ite trees, not with water but with wine. 



Pliny informs us that the plane-tree was first 

 brought over the Torrian Sea, into the island of 

 Diomede, where it was planted to ornament the tomb 

 of that hero. This same author records the particu- 

 lars of several remarkable plane-trees, and tells us of 

 one in Lycia that had a cave or hollow in the trunk 

 which measured eighty-one feet in circumference. 

 The summit of this tree, notwithstanding theinUrnal 

 decay of the trunk, is said to have been sufficiently 

 umbrageous to have borne (mite a little forest of 



branches aloft. In this singular tree Licinius 

 Mucianus, when consul, used to give dinner and 

 supper parties, and he sometimes preferred sleeping 

 in the hollow, perhaps on account of the wine he had 

 imbibed on such occasions, and was unable to walk 

 home. 



The Emperor Caligula found an extraordinary plane- 

 tree, near Velitrre, in the cavity of which he gave a 

 supper party to fifteen of his debauched courtiers, 

 leaving ample room for his train of attendants to wait 

 on the company. The emperor called it the " Feast 

 of the Nest," because it had been given in a tree. 

 Pliny states that when this tree was first introduced 

 into the country of the Morini, a maritime people of 

 Gaul, the inhabitants paid a tribute to the Romans 

 for permission to enjoy its shade. 



The Oriental plane appears to have been intro- 

 duced into England about the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, and is first mentioned by Dr. Turner, the 

 father of English botany, who, in his Herbal, pub- 

 lished under the title of "Names of Herbs," 1541, 

 says : " I have seen two very young trees in England, 

 which were called there Playn-trees, whose leaves in 

 all poyntes were lyke unto the leaves of the Italian 

 Play n- tree, and it is doubtless that these two trees 

 were either brought out of Italy or some farr countre 

 where unto the frieres, monks, and chanons went a 

 pilgrimage." 



Gerard, who published his Herbal in 1596, does 

 not mention having seen the Oriental plane growing in 

 England, but tells us " his servant, William Marshall, 

 whom he sent into the Mediterranean Sea as surgeon 

 unto the Hercules, of London, found divers trees 

 hereof growing in Lepanto, hard by the seaside, at 

 the entrance into the town, a port of Morea, being 

 part of Greece ; and from thence brought one of 

 these rough buttons, being the fruit thereof." Par- 

 kinson, in his " Theatrum Botanica," published 

 1640, tells us that the plane-tree is a native of Asia, 

 but it is very rare in the Christian world. Evelyn, 

 who did much for the improvement of horticulture in 

 the reigns of the Stuarts, by his writings and the 

 introduction of exotic trees into this country, men- 

 tions, in his discourse on " Forest Trees," published 

 1664, that the great Lord Chancellor Bacon was the 

 first who planted a noble parcel of Oriental plane- 

 trees at his seat at Verulam (St. Albans, Herts), 

 some of which continue unto this day. Goodwood 

 Park also contains some of the finest specimens of 

 this tree in England, and, perhaps, in Europe, ex- 

 cepting those in the vicinity of Constantinople. The 

 Oriental plane, known as the Chinar, has been culti- 

 vated in Persia from the earliest periods ; long avenues 

 of it are to be found in the gardens, under which the 

 Persians perform their religious duties. Sir William 

 Ouseley mentions that on these trees the devotees 

 sacrifice their old clothes by hanging them to the 

 branches, and that the trunks of the favourite Chiuar 

 trees are commonly found studded with rusty nails 



