For other species, _vid._ _Raii Dendro._ p. 12. FOOTNOTES: {209:1} Andr. Medicus apud Athenaeum, _Deipnos._ lib. 3 cap. 29. {213:1} _A mora, ob tarditatem._ CHAPTER II. _Of the Platanus, Lotus, Cornus, Acacia_, &c. 1. _Platanus_, that so beautiful and precious tree, anciently sacred to{214:1} Helena, (and with which she crown’d the _Lar_, and _Genius_ of the place) was so doated on by Xerxes, that Ælian and other authors tell us, he made halt, and stopp’d his prodigious army of seventeen hundred thousand soldiers, which even cover’d the sea, exhausted rivers, and thrust mount Athos from the Continent, to admire the pulcritude and procerity of one of these goodly trees; and became so fond of it, that spoiling both himself, his concubines, and great persons of all their jewels, he cover’d it with gold, gems, neck-laces, scarfs and bracelets, and infinite riches: In sum, was so enamour’d of it, that for some days, neither the concernment of his Grand Expedition, nor interest of honour, nor the necessary motion of his portentous army, could perswade him from it: He styl’d it his mistress, his minion, his Goddess; and when he was forc’d to part from it, he caus’d the figure of it to be stamp’d in a medal of gold, which he continually wore about him. Where-ever they built their sumptuous and magnificent colleges for the exercise of youth in gymnastics, as riding, shooting, wrestling, running, &c. (like to our French Academies) and where the graver philosophers also met to converse together, and improve their studies, betwixt the Xista, and _subdiales ambulationes_ (which were portico’s open to the air) they planted groves and walks of platans, to refresh and shade the _Palæstritæ_; as you have them describ’d by Vitruvius, lib. 5. cap. 11. and as Claudius Perrault has assisted the text, with a figure, or ichnographical plot. These trees{215:1} the Romans first brought out of the Levant, and cultivated with so much industry and cost, for their stately and proud heads only, that great orators and states-men, Cicero and Hortensius, would exchange now and then a turn at the bar, that they might have the pleasure to step to their villas, and refresh their platans, which they would often irrigate with wine instead of water; _crevit & affuso laetior umbra mero_: when Hortensius taught trees to tipple wine; and so priz’d the very shadow of it, that when afterwards they transplanted them into France, they exacted a{215:2} _solarium_ and tribute of any of the natives, who should presume but to put his head under it. But whether for any virtue extraordinary in the shade, or other propitious influence issuing from them, a worthy Knight, who stay’d at Ispahan in Persia, when that famous city was infected with a raging pestilence, told me, that since they have planted a greater number of these noble trees about it, the plague has not come nigh their dwellings. Pliny affirms, there is no tree whatsoever which so well defends us from the