CULTTYATED PLANTS. 175 



the plane-tree a native of Asia Minor, but of very early intro- 

 duction into Italy. It was confounded by ancient Greek and 

 Roman writers with the Zizyphus lotus, or with the Celtis australis, 

 under the name of tree lotus. But those lofty and ancient trees 

 recorded by Pliny, one on the square of the temple of Lucian, 

 another near the temple of Vulcan, and some others near the 

 house of Lucius Crassus, as celebrated for their spreading 

 branches and thick shade, could have been no other than the 

 Diospyros lotus, and not the Celtis as supposed by some com- 

 mentators. From having been for ages extensively planted in 

 Italy, and from its readiness to sow itself there, the Diospyros 

 has now become naturalised in some localities in such abundance 

 as to induce its insertion in several local floras as indigenous. 

 The American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) with larger 

 fruits, now also to be met with in Italy, was only introduced 

 there from England about the year 1793. 



Professor Targioni's notes on the history and geography of the 

 Cedar of Lebanon (Pinus cedrus) are now superseded by the 

 discussions which have of late occupied some of our most 

 distinguished botanists and horticulturists, and which it would 

 be out of place to enter into on the present occasion. We will 

 merely mention as a curious fact, that a tree, said to have been 

 known to the ancients as of great value, and growing in parts of 

 Western Asia and North Africa, with which the Romans had 

 much intercourse, should never have been planted in Italy till it 

 was carried from England to the Botanic garden at Pisa in the 

 year 1787 ; that is, above a century after Miller had introduced 

 it into the Apothecaries' Garden at Chelsea, and fifty-three years 

 after Bernard de Jussieu deposited one with so much ceremony in 

 the Jardin du Roi at Paris. The original Pisa tree is now in 

 great beauty, and the species is becoming very generally planted 

 in Tuscany. 



The Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens), generally admitted to be 

 a native of Crete, Syria, and Asia Minor, has for ages been 

 common in Tuscany, where it attains great size and beauty, 

 although individuals of extraordinary dimensions were more 

 frequent in past times in the avenues of seignorial villas than 

 they are at present. The wood was much celebrated by the 

 ancients for its durability. Pliny, as well as modern writers, 

 quotes several instances of its remaining sound for many centuries. 

 We learn from Thucydides that this incorruptibility caused it to 

 be used by the Athenians for the coflSns of distinguished 



