VII. THE BUTTONWOOD TREE. 235 



feet two inches at six, just above a small branch. This is a 

 magnificent tree, holding its size for twenty feet, and, though 

 inclining towards the northeast, sustaining a broad, cylindrical 

 and noble head of great height. At West Springfield, I meas- 

 ured, in 1S38, one by the road-side, which I found to be sixteen 

 feet six inches at four feet from the ground. 



The oriental plane tree holds the same place on the Eastern 

 continent which our buttonwood does on this. It differs from 

 the occidental, as has been already said, in having a more pal- 

 mate leaf and a less umbrageous head. Yet it was the greatest 

 favorite among the ancients. Cimon sought to gratify the Athe- 

 nians by planting a public walk with it. It was considered the 

 finest shade tree of Europe. 



Pliny expresses his admiration that a tree valuable only for 

 its shade should have been introduced from a distant part of the 

 world. He tells the story of its having been brought across 

 the Ionian Sea to shade the tomb of Diomedes, in the island of 

 the hero, that it came thence into fertile Sicily, and was among 

 the first of foreign trees presented to Italy, and that too, as early 

 as the taking of Rome by the Gauls. From Italy it was carried 

 into Spain, and even into the most remote parts of then barba- 

 rous France, where the natives were made to pay for the privi- 

 lege of sitting under its shade.* No tree was ever so great a 

 favorite with the Romans. They ornamented their villas with 

 it, valuing it above all other trees for the depth of its salutary 

 shade in summer, and the freedom with which it let in the 

 winter's sun. They nourished it with pure wine ;f and Hor- 

 tensius is related to have begged of his rival, Cicero, to ex- 

 change turns with him in a cause in which they were engaged, 



* Sed quis non jure miretur, arborem umbras gratia tantum ex alieno petitam 

 orbe? Platanus hoec est, mare Ionium in Diomedis insulam ejusdem tumuli gra- 

 tia primum invecta, &c. — Plinii Sec. Nat. Hist., XII, 3. 



f Martial wrote an epigram to Caesar's plane at Tartessus, on the Boetis, the 

 jewel of his palace : 



JEdibus in mediis totas amplexa Penates 

 Stat platanus : 



To its other honors he adds — 



Crevit et effuso latior umbra mero. — Epig., IX, 62. 



