'43 and '44. The shoots seemed. to have been nipped as by a frost. The large trees were particularly affected, but by no means exclusively. For some weeks, in each of these springs, many of the trees seemed to have been killed. In the course of the summers, most of them have pushed forth leaves on the sides of the branches, and have seemed partially recovering. The extremities of the branches, on almost all the buttonwoods, are dead, and many of the trees are now, in the fall of 1845, completely so.

This malady has been attributed to various causes. By most persons, it is considered the effect of frost. Others ascribe it to the action of some insect or worm; and others believe it to be some unaccountable disease.

It seems to me most probable that it is owing to the tree's not maturing its wood during the previous summer, so that it is incapable of resisting the cold of winter. The present season, of 1845, has been a remarkably warm one, and this year, if ever, the buttonwood must have had time to mature its wood. If the wood formed during the present season should not be affected by the cold of the spring of 1846, some confirmation will be given to this conjecture.

Very little use in the arts is made of the wood of the plane tree. It is very perishable when exposed to the weather; it is said to warp considerably, and in every valuable property is thought to be surpassed by other kinds of timber equally abundant and accessible. For some purposes of ornament, however, it would seem to present claims to attention. The roots, according to Michaux, have a beautifully red color, when taken from the earth, but lose it on exposure to the light. Means might doubtless be found to make this color permanent. The wood of the stem is hard, of a firm and close texture, of an agreeable, faint red color, and beautifully varied by close lines of silver grain. There is every reason to believe that it is as valuable as that of the oriental plane, and that the great excellence and variety of our timber trees have alone prevented the necessity of its use.

S. W. Pomeroy, Esq., in an article in the fifth volume of the New England Farmer, urges the cultivation of the buttonwood.

He says it may be propagated with more ease than any tree of the forest, and the speedy returns of fuel it will make, lead him to believe that its cultivation would become general, if its value were duly appreciated. The wood of buttonwood trees grown in moist situations burns very ill when green, but when it grows on dry, sandy or rocky soils, it burns as freely, when green, as oak cut at the same time. It is not, he thinks, equal to the best kinds of fuel, but it is superior to chestnut, and makes excellent charcoal. "It is a very valuable fuel for stoves. Perhaps it may be ranked with the best kinds of soft maple." If the question is, what kind of tree, on land of the same fertility, will furnish fuel which will give the greatest amount of caloric, he says, "I do not hesitate to declare my perfect conviction, that it, (the buttonwood,) will furnish results much more favorable than any tree our country produces, except the locust on dry soils."

There are many remarkable trees of this kind in various parts of the State. In 1839, I measured two in front of the house of Elijah Bascom, Jr., in Hanover. The first was thirteen feet five inches in girth at the ground, and ten feet two and a half inches at four and a half feet, with many large, spreading branches, forming a broad top and an ample shade. The other was twelve feet and two inches in girth at the ground, and ten feet three inches at four and a half feet, with branches larger but less spreading. In Rochester, one by the road-side was eleven feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. One in Roxbury, in a lot of J. Davis, nearly opposite the house of E. Francis, Esq., measured, in 1837, fifteen feet six inches at five and a half feet from the surface. An old hollow tree near the little bridge over the south branch of the Nashua, in Lancaster, bending over the water, was, in 1840, sixteen feet ten inches at the ground, fifteen feet nine inches at three, and fourteen feet nine inches at six feet. A second near it and vigorous, was, at the same heights respectively, sixteen feet eleven inches, thirteen feet six inches, and thirteen feet four inches. A third, an opening at the foot of which showed that it was extensively decayed at the centre, was twenty-three feet two inches at the ground, eighteen feet six inches at three feet, and eighteen

feet two inches at six, just above a small branch. This is a magnificent tree, holding its size for twenty feet, and, though inclining towards the northeast, sustaining a broad, cylindrical and noble head of great height. At West Springfield, I measured, in 1838, one by the road-side, which I found to be sixteen feet six inches at four feet from the ground.

The oriental plane tree holds the same place on the Eastern continent which our buttonwood does on this. It differs from the occidental, as has been already said, in having a more palmate leaf and a less umbrageous head. Yet it was the greatest favorite among the ancients. Cimon sought to gratify the Athenians by planting a public walk with it. It was considered the finest shade tree of Europe.

Pliny expresses his admiration that a tree valuable only for its shade should have been introduced from a distant part of the world. He tells the story of its having been brought across the Ionian Sea to shade the tomb of Diomedes, in the island of the hero, that it came thence into fertile Sicily, and was among the first of foreign trees presented to Italy, and that too, as early as the taking of Rome by the Gauls. From Italy it was carried into Spain, and even into the most remote parts of then barbarous France, where the natives were made to pay for the privilege of sitting under its shade.* No tree was ever so great a favorite with the Romans. They ornamented their villas with it, valuing it above all other trees for the depth of its salutary shade in summer, and the freedom with which it let in the winter's sun. They nourished it with pure wine;† and Hortensius is related to have begged of his rival, Cicero, to exchange turns with him in a cause in which they were engaged,

Sed quis non jure miretur, arborem umbræ gratia tantum ex alieno petitam orbe? Platanus hæc est, mare Ionium in Diomedis insulam ejusdem tumuli gratia primum invecta, &c.-Plinii Sec. Nat. Hist., XII, 3.

† Martial wrote an epigram to Cæsar's plane at Tartessus, on the Bætis, the jewel of his palace :

Edibus in mediis totas amplexa Penates

Stat platanus:

To its other honors he adds

Crevit et effuso latior umbra mero.—Epig., IX, 62.

that he might himself do this office for a tree he had planted in his Tusculanum.*

Pliny describes some of the most remarkable planes. In the walks of the Academy at Athens, were trees whose trunk was thirty-three cubits, (about forty-eight feet,) to the branches.t In his own time, there was one in Lycia, near a cool fountain by the road-side, with a cavity of eighty-one feet circuit within its trunk, a forest-like head, and arms like trees overshadowing broad fields. Within this apartment, made by moss-covered stones to resemble a grotto, Licinius Mucianus thought it a fact worthy of history, that he dined with nineteen companions, and slept there too, not regretting splendid marbles, pictures and golden fretted roofs, and missing only the sound of rain drops pattering on the leaves.

In more modern times, the Persians have shown an equal partiality to the plane tree, which they call the chinar. Avenues and rows of this tree intersect their gardens; beneath them they love to enjoy the cool breeze, and here they worship; and they or travellers among them ascribe the virtue of protection from the plague to great numbers of these noble trees planted near their dwellings at Ispahan.‡

In the Levant, in Persia, and in other parts of Asia, where timber trees are few, and where the oriental plane is the commonest of trees, it is much used in carpentry, joinery, cabinetmaking, and even in ship-building. Olivier says, "The plane tree grows naturally throughout all the East; it is common on the banks of the rivulets in Greece, in the islands of the Archipelago, on the coast of Asia Minor, in Syria, and in Persia." "Its wood is not inferior for cabinet-work to any wood of Europe; it takes a beautiful polish, and is very agreeably veined;" and "the Persians employ no other for their furniture, their doors and their windows." That it has a beautiful surface and a very smooth grain, and that it takes a bril

*Macrobius Saturn: II, 9.

So I understand,-"cubitorum xxxiii, a radice ramos antecedente."-Nat. Hist., XII, 5. The annotator thinks otherwise.

+ Evelyn.

Olivier's Travels, I, 116.

liant polish, is seen in the famous Scotch snuff-boxes, which are made of it.

Mr. Nuttall has described a remarkably distinct species of plane tree, which he calls the California buttonwood, Platanus racemòsus. The leaves are "divided more than half way down into five, sharp-pointed, lanceolate portions, of which the two lower are the smallest; all the divisions are quite entire, two of them in small leaves are suppressed, thus producing a leaf of only three parts. Above, as usual, the surface is at first clad with a yellowish, copious down, formed of ramified hairs, which quickly falls off and spreads itself in the atmosphere. The under surface of the leaves is, however, always copiously clad with a coat of whitish wool, which remains. The young leaves, clad in their brown, pilose clothing, have a very uncommon appearance, and feel exactly like a piece of stout, thick, woollen cloth. The branchlets, petioles and peduncles are equally villous. The male catkins are small, less in size than peas, full of long haired scales, and with unusually small anthers. The female catkins are in racemes of three to five in number, with remarkably long styles, being between two and three tenths of an inch in length, and persistent on the ripe balls. The raceme with the full grown balls measures nine inches. The tree has, therefore, a very unusual appearance, filled with these very long, pendulous racemes, each bearing from three to four, or even five balls, at the distance of about an inch from each other. The stigmas are at first of a deep and bright brown." Mr. Nuttall supposes the wood to be superior to that of the common species, harder, more durable, and less liable to warp.

The leaves and fruit of this tree are figured in Nuttall's Supplement to the North American Sylva, I, Plate 15, and in Audubon's Birds of America, Plate 362.

The plane tree may be propagated by seed, by layers or by cuttings. The best and surest way is by seed. These are ripe, in our climate, in October or November. They may be readily separated from the globular aments, by beating or by

* Nuttall's Supplement to the N. A. Sylva, I, 47–48.