Chap. 3.] 
EXOTIC TEEE8. 
]03 
life. It is by the aid of the tree that we plough the deep, and 
bring near to us far distant lands ; it is by the aid of the tree, 
too, that we construct our edifices. The statueS; even, of the 
deities were formed of the wood of trees, in the days when no 
value had been set as yet on the dead carcase^ of a wild beast, 
and when, luxury not yet deriving its sanction from the 
gods themselves, we had not to behold, resplendent with the 
same ivory, the heads of the divinities^ and the feet of our 
tables. It is related that the Gauls, separated from us as they 
were by the Alps, which then formed an almost insurmountable 
bulwark, had, as their chief motive for invading Italy, its 
dried figs, its grapes, its oil, and its wine, samples of w^hich 
had been brought back to them by Helico, a citizen of the 
Helvetii, who had been staying at Eome, to practise there as 
an artizan. We may offer some excuse, then, for them, when 
we know that they came in quest of these various productions, 
though at the price even of war. 
CHAP. 3. EXOTIC TEEES. WHEN THE PLANE-TREE EIEST 
APPEARED IN ITALY, AND WHENCE IT CAME. 
Eut who is there that will not, with good reason, be sur- 
prised to learn that a tree has been introduced among us from 
a foreign clime for nothing but its shade } I mean the plane, 
which was first brought across the Ionian Sea to the Isle^^ of 
Diomedes, there to be planted at his tomb, and was afterwards 
imported thence into Sicily, being one of the very first exotic 
trees that were introduced into Italy. At the present day, 
however, it has penetrated as far as the country of the 
Morini, and occupies even a tributary^^ soil; in return for which 
^ He alludes to the pursuit of the elephant, for the purpose of obtaining 
ivory, which was extensively used in his day, in making the statues of the 
divinities. 
9 A sarcastic antithesis. And yet Dalechamps would read "hominum" 
instead of "numinum" ! 
1^ Praemissa, The exact meaning of this word does not appear. Though 
all the MSS. agree in it, it is probably a corrupt reading. Plutarch, in 
his Life of Camillus, says that the wine of Italy was first introduced in 
Gaul by Aruns, the Etruscan. 
The Platanus orientalis of Linnaeus. It received its name from the 
Greek irXdrogy " breadth," by reason of its wide-spreading branches. 
12 For further mention of this island, now Tremiti, see B. iii. c. 30. 
13 He alludes, probably, to the *'vectigal solarium," a sort of ground- 
