STRAITS OF THERMOPYL^. 313 
upon the tree, in little balls, until the spring; chap. 
VIII 
as they do not ripen early in the autumn. We v— .^^.i^ 
found many of the seed-vessels in a mature 
state, hanging from the branches : and being 
desirous of bearing away a living memorial 
from a spot so celebrated, we gathered many of 
them'. Thence, leaving i\\e fountain, we entered 
the extensive bog, or fen, through which a 
narrow paved causeway offers the only ap- 
proach to all the southern parts of Greece. 
This causeway has, upon either side of it, a 
deep and impassable morass; and it is further 
bounded by the sea towards the east, and the 
precipices of Mount (Eta tow^ards the ivest. Here 
is situate the Turkish dervene, or barrier, upon a 
(S) The seeds of this tree were afterwards sown by the author iu a 
garden belonging to the Fellows of Jesvs College, Cutnbridge, where 
theyiprang up ; and there is one tree now standing in that garden, 
which has been thus raised. It is in a flourishing state; but its 
height at present does not exceed eleven feet, and its girth is only 
seven inciies in circumference. The Oriental Plane-tree is not a plant 
of very quick growth ; but in warm latitudes, especially if it he near 
to water, it attain- a most astonishing size, ^lian relates the ad- 
oration that was paid b\ Xerxes to a tree of this sort in Phrygia. The 
marvellous Plane-tree of the Island of Cos has been described in a 
former Part of tlicsc Travels. Pliny mentions a Plane-tree in LvciA 
that had mouldered away into an immense cave, eighty feet in cir- 
cumference. The Governor of the province, with eighteen others, 
dined coramodiously upon benches of pumice placed around it. Cali- 
fcnla had a tree of the same kind, at his villa : the hollow of it held 
lirteen persons at dinner, with all their attendants. 
