THE OCCIDENTAL PLANE. 



213 



a light ash-colour, and has the property of throwing 

 off its bark in scales ; thus naturally cleansing 

 itself, at least its larger boughs, from moss, and 

 other parasitical encumbrances. This would be 

 no recommendation of it in a picturesque light, if 

 the removal of these encumbrances did not sub- 

 stitute as great a beauty in their room. These 

 scales are very irregular, falling off sometimes in 

 one part, and sometimes in another ; and, as the 

 under bark is, immediately after its excoriation, of 

 a lighter hue than the upper, it offers to the pencil 

 those smart touches which have so much effect in 

 painting. These flakes, however, would be more 

 beautiful if they fell off in a circular form, instead 

 of a perpendicular one. They would correspond 

 and unite better with the circular form of the bole. 

 No tree forms a more pleasing shade than the 

 Occidental Plane. It is full-leaved, and its leaf is 

 large, smooth, and of a fine texture, and is seldom 

 injured by insects. Its lower branches, shooting 

 horizontally, soon take a direction to the ground, 

 . and the spray seems more sedulous than that of 

 any tree we have, by twisting about in various 

 forms, to fill up every little vacuity with shade. 

 At the same time it must be owned, the twisting 

 of its branches is a disadvantage to this tree, when 

 it is stripped of its leaves and reduced to a skele- 

 ton. It has not the natural appearance which the 

 spray of the Oak, and that of many other trees, 

 discovers in winter. Nor indeed does its foliage, 

 from the largeness of the leaf, and the mode of 

 its growth, make the most picturesque appearance 

 in summer."* 



The leaf of the Plane exhibits one of those ex- 



* Gilpin's Forest Scenery." 



