2038 ARBORETUM AND FKUTICETUM. PA LIT III. 



affirmed was the tree against which Marsyas was hanged up when he was 

 flayed by Apollo. Plane trees were planted near all the public schools in 

 Athens. The groves of Epicurus, in which Aristotle taught his peripatetic 

 disciples; the shady walks planted near the Gymnasia, and other public 

 buildings of Athens ; and the groves of Academus, in which Plato delivered 

 his celebrated discourses ; were all formed of this tree. Socrates swore by 

 the plane tree; and this was one of the things which offended Melitus, who 

 thought it a great crime to swear by so beautiful a tree. Pliny informs us that 

 the plane was first brought from the East, over the Ionian Sea, into the Island 

 of Diomedes, for a monument to that hero. Thence it passed into Sicily, 

 where Dionysius the elder planted it in his garden at Syracuse, about 400 B. c. ; 

 and this garden, in after times, became a place of exercise for youths. Soon 

 after the plane tree was planted in Sicily, it was introduced into Italy, and 

 thence, Pliny adds, into the country of the Morini, a maritime people of 

 Gaul, who paid a tribute to the Romans for permission to enjoy its shade. 

 Dionysius the geographer compares the form of the Morea in the Levant, 

 the ancient Peloponnesus, to the leaf of this tree ; and Pliny makes the 

 same remark in allusion to its numerous bays. To illustrate this comparison, 

 Martyn, in his Virgil (vol. ii. p. 149.), gives a figure of the plane tree leaf 

 (see 'fig. 1958. a), and a map of the Morea (fig. 1598. b). The Romans 



1958 





set a high value on the plane, and planted their public and academic walks 

 with it. Vitruvius says that they planted plane trees to shade and re- 

 fresh the palaestritae (lib. v. c. 11.); and "Claudius Perrault has assisted 

 the text with a figure, or ichnographical plot. These trees the Romans," 

 continues Evelyn, " first brought out of the Levant, and cultivated with so 

 much industry and cost, for their stately and proud heads only, that the great 

 orators and statesmen, Cicero and Hortensius, would exchange now and then 

 a turn at the bar, that they might have the pleasure to step to their villas, and 

 refresh their platans, which they would often irrigate with wine instead of 

 water: Crevit et affuso latior umbra mero." {Hunt. EveL, ii. p. 55.) " Much 

 has been said," observes Pliny, "of the plane trees in the Lyceum at Athens, 

 of which the roots extended even farther than the branches. There is now 

 in Lycia a famous plane tree, on the public road, near a very cold fountain. 

 This tree is in itself a forest : its branches are as large and thick as trees, and 

 the)' cover an immense extent of ground with their shade. The trunk of this 

 tree, which is 81ft. in circumference, is hollow, and has inside numerous 

 stones covered with moss. This tree was such a favourite with Licinius 

 Mucianus, three times governor of the province of Lycia, that he thought it 

 worth while to hand down to posterity, that he had eaten in this hollow tree, 

 or grotto, with eighteen persons, who had, for couches or cushions to recline 

 on, only the leaves of the tree (large ipsa toros prtebcnte fronde) ; that the 

 thickness of the foliage sheltered them from a heavy shower of rain ; and that 

 he (the governor) enjoyed more pleasure during his repast in this tree, thsui 



