THE WESTERN PLANE. 



WHEN journeying through the older towns of New 

 England, the melancholy forms of the ill-fated Planes 

 attract our attention by their superior size, and still more 

 by the marks of decay which are stamped upon all. 

 This appearance is most remarkable in the early part of 

 summer; for the trees are not dead, but some hidden 

 malady caused the first crop of foliage to perish for sev- 

 eral successive years. The trees, after putting forth a new 

 crop of leaves from a second growth of buds, had not 

 time to ripen their wood before the frosts of winter came 

 and destroyed their recent branches. This disaster was 

 repeated annually for ten or fifteen years, causing an ac- 

 cumulation of twigs at the extremities of the branches, 

 making a broom-like appendage, and greatly deforming 

 the spray of the tree. 



The Western Plane, or Buttonwood, is a well-known 

 tree by the waysides in New England and in the forests 

 of the Middle and Western States. It belongs to a genus 

 of which there are only three known species, and this 

 genus constitutes a. whole natural family. It may, there- 

 fore, be something more than a fanciful hypothesis, that 

 all its noble kindred have perished and disappeared from 

 the face of the earth, with other plants of a distant geologi- 

 cal era, and that the three remaining species are destined 

 to share the same fate, as signalized by the mysterious 

 fatality which has attended both the Western and Ori- 

 ental Plane. The Buttonwood is remarkable for its great 

 height and magnitude, its large palmate leaves, and its 



