this tree was supposed, by the ancients, to be considerable; and there are few old trees in this country. One, still existing at Lee Court, in Kent, was celebrated in 1683 for its age and magnitude. Some of the largest trees in the neighbourhood of London are at Mount Grove, Hampstead, where they are between seventy and eighty feet in height; and in the grounds of Lambeth Palace, there is one ninety feet high, with a trunk of four and a half feet in diameter.

The Oriental Plane was held by the Greeks sacred to Helen; and the virgins of Sparta are represented by Theocritus as claiming homage for it, saying, "Reverence me! I am the tree of

Helen." It was so admired by Xerxes, that Ælian and other authors inform us, he halted his prodigious army near one of them an entire day, during its march for the invasion of Greece; and, on leaving, covered it with gold, gems, necklaces, scarfs, and bracelets, and an infinity of riches. He likewise caused its figure to be stamped on a medal of gold, which he afterwards wore continually about him.

Among many remarkable Plane-trees recorded by Pliny, he mentions one in Lycia, which had a cave or hollow in the trunk that measured eightyone feet in circumference. In this hollow were stone seats, covered with moss; and there, during the time of his consulship, Licinius Mutianus, with eighteen of his friends, was accustomed to dine and sup! Its branches spread to such an amazing extent, that this single tree appeared like a grove;

and this consul, says Pliny, chose rather to sleep in the hollow cavity of this tree, than to repose in his marble chamber, where his bed was richly wrought with curious needlework, and o'ercanopied with beaten gold. Pausanias, also, who lived about the middle of the second century, records a Plane-tree of remarkable size and beauty in Arcadia, which was then supposed to have been planted by the hands of Menelaus, the husband of Helen, which would make the age of the tree about thirteen hundred years.

At a later period magnificent examples of this umbrageous tree continued to flourish in Greece, and many of these are still existing. One of the most celebrated is at Buyukdère (or the Great Valley), about thirty miles from Constantinople, which M. de Candolle conjectured to be more than two thousand years old; when measured, in 1831, by Dr. Walsh, it was found to be one hundred and fifty-one feet in circumference at the base, and the diameter of its head covered a space of one hundred and thirty feet. Some doubt, however, seems to exist as to whether it should be considered as a single tree, or as a number of individuals which have sprung from a decayed stock, and become united at the base. The hollow contained within the stem of this enormous tree, we are told, affords a magnificent tent to the Seraskier and his officers, when the Turks encamp in this valley.

Among the Turks, the Planes are preserved with a devoted and religious tenderness.

[Platanus occidentalis. Nat. Ord.-Platanacea; Linn.—Mono. Polya.]

THE American or Western Plane is found over an immense area in North America, comprising the Atlantic and western states, and extending beyond the Mississippi. In the Atlantic states, this tree is commonly known by the name of button-wood ; and sometimes, in Virginia, by that of water-beech, from its preferring moist localities, "where the

soil is loose, deep, and fertile." On the banks of the Ohio, and in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, it is commonly called sycamore, and sometimes plane-tree. The button-tree is, however, the name by which this tree is most generally known in America.

The Western Plane was first introduced into England about 1630, and was afterwards so generally planted, in consequence of its easy propagation by cuttings and rapid growth, that it soon became more common than P. orientalis. This tree is now, however, rare in this country, from the greater number having been killed by a severe frost in May 1809, and by the severe winter of 1813-4.

The American Plane, in magnitude and general appearance, closely resembles the oriental plane. The one species, however, can always be distinguished from the other by the following characters: In the Oriental Plane, the leaves are smaller and much more deeply lobed than in the Western tree, and the petioles of the leaves, which in the Oriental species are green, in the American tree are purplish-red; the fruit, or ball-shaped catkins, also, of the Western Plane, are considerably larger, and not so rough externally as those of the other. The bark is said to scale off in larger pieces, and the wood to be more curiously veined. In all other respects, the descriptive particulars of both trees are the same. According to Michang, the Western Plane is "the loftiest and largest tree of the United States." In 1802, he saw one growing on the banks of the Ohio, whose

girth at four feet from the ground, was 47 feet, or nearly 16 feet in diameter. This tree, which showed no symptoms of decay, but on the contrary exhibited a rich foliage and vigorous vegetation, began to ramify at about 20 feet from the ground, a stem of no mean length, but short in comparison to many large trees of this species that he met with, whose boles towered to a height of 60 or 70 feet without a single branch. Even in England, specimens of the Western Plane, of no great age, are to be met with 100 feet in height. The rate of growth of P. occidentalis, when placed near water, is so rapid, that in ten years it will attain the height of forty feet; and a tree in the Palace Garden at Lambeth, near a pond, in twenty years had attained the height of eighty feet, with a trunk eight feet in circumference at three feet from the ground, and, the diameter of the head forty-eight feet. This was in 1817.—(See Neill's Hort. Tour, p. 9.)

As a picturesque tree, Gilpin places the Occidental Plane after the oak, the ash, the elm, the beech, and the hornbeam, which he considers as deciduous trees of the first rank; saying of both species of Platanus, that, though neither so beautiful nor so characteristic as the first-named trees, they are yet worth the notice of the eye of the admirer of the picturesque.

"The Occidental Plane has a very picturesque stem. It is smooth, and of a light ash colour, and has the property of throwing off its bark in scales; thus naturally cleansing itself, at least its larger