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ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM

PART III.

affirmed was the tree against which Marsyas was hanged up when he wasflayed by Apollo. Plane trees were planted near all the public schools inAthens. The groves of Epicurus, in which Aristotle taught his peripateticdisciples; the shady walks planted near the Gymnasia, and other publicbuildings of Athens; and the groves of Academus, in which Plato deliveredhis celebrated discourses; were all formed of this tree. Socrates swore bythe plane tree; and this was one of the things which offended Melitus, whothought it a great crime to swear by so beautiful a tree. Pliny informs us thatthe plane was first brought from the East, over the Ionian Sea, into the Islandof Diomedes, for a monument to that hero. Thence it passed into Sicily,where Dionysius the elder planted it in his garden at Syracuse, about 400 B. c.;and this garden, in after times, became a place of exercise for youths. Soonafter the plane tree was planted in Sicily, it was introduced into Italy, andthence, Pliny adds, into the country of the Morini, a maritime people ofGaul, who paid a tribute to the Romans for permission to enjoy its shade.Dionysius the geographer compares the form of the Morea in the Levant,the ancient Peloponnesus, to the leaf of this tree; and Pliny makes thesame remark in allusion to its numerous bays. To illustrate this comparison,Martyn, in his Virgil (vol. ii. p. 149.), gives a figure of the plane tree leaf(see Jig. 1958. a), and a map of the Morea {Jig. 1598. b). The Romans

set a high value on the plane, and planted their public and academic walkswith it. Vitruvius says that they planted plane trees to shade and re-fresh the palaestritae (lib. v. c. 11.); and “Claudius Perrault has assistedthe text with a figure, or ichnographical plot. These trees the Romans,”continues Evelyn, “ first brought out of the Levant, and cultivated with somuch industry and cost, for their stately and proud heads only, that the greatorators and statesmen, Cicero and Hortensius, would exchange now and thena turn at the bar, that they might have the pleasure to step to their villas, andrefresh their platans, which they would often irrigate with wine instead ofwater: Crevit et affuso latior umbra mero.” {Hunt. Evel., ii. p. 55.) “ Much

has been said,” observes Pliny, “of the plane trees in the Lyceum at Athens,of which the roots extended even farther than the branches. There is nowin Lycia a famous plane tree, on the public road, near a very cold fountain.This tree is in itself a forest: its branches are as large and thick as trees, andthey cover an immense extent of ground with their shade. The trunk of thistree, which is 81 ft. in circumference, is hollow, and has inside numerousstones covered with moss. This tree was such a favourite with LiciniusMucianus, three times governor of the province of Lycia, that he thought itworth while to hand down to posterity, that he had eaten in this hollow tree,or grotto, with eighteen persons, who had, for couches or cushions to reclineon, only the leaves of the tree {large ipsa toros prcebente fronde ) ; that thethickness of the foliage sheltered them from a heavy shower of rain ; and thathe (the governor) enjoyed more pleasure during his repast in this tree, than