32 TREES AND TREE-PLANTING. 
of the colony for several years. And the “Treaty Elm,” 
under which the good William Penn made his treaty 
with the Indians in 1682, and which stood upon the 
banks of the Delaware until the year 1827, when, in spite 
of the care taken to preserve it, it fell to the eround, and 
had a regenesis in the shape of canes, snuff-boxes, and 
drinking-cups. 
The walnut-tree, originally called gaulinut, from hav- 
ing been introduced into England from France (ancient 
Gaul), was once considered by herbalists to be efficacious 
in all diseases of the head, as it bore the head signature 
(¢.¢.,a resemblance to the head), the outer skin being the 
pericranium, the shell the skull, the kernel the brain. 
At the end of the sixteenth century walnuts did more 
service than cannon-balls, as at the siege of Amiens by 
the Spanish during the opposition to the ascension of 
Henry Quatre to the French throne, a party of soldiers, 
dressed as French peasants, brought a cart-load of nuts 
to sell, and when admitted, as they passed through the 
gates let some of the nuts spill out, which the sentinels 
dispersed eagerly to gather up, and while stooping were 
set upon, killed, and the gates taken by the disguised 
peasants, who then admitted the Spanish army. 
In ancient times the fig-tree was sacred to the gods. Its 
leaves were used for the crown of Saturn; its branches 
borne in procession at the feast of Plynteria, when the 
statue of Minerva was washed. In the Thargelia, or 
feast of the sun, they wore the fig, and played, on flutes, 
an ode to “The Fig-tree.” The Romans honored it be- 
cause Romulus and Remus were found under a fig-tree, 
and it was considered a type of friendship. 
Paris has an elm-tree planted in 1605, the leaves of 
which are as early as those of younger trees. 
The soap-plant of California is not only beautiful, but 
useful, the bulbs being preferred by those who use them 
to the “Gnest quality of soap. There is another tree, found 
in South America, the bark of which is used as soap also. 
