heat of the sun in Summer, nor that admits it more kindly in Winter. And for our encouragement, I do upon experience assure you, that they will flourish and abide with us, without any more trouble than frequent and plentiful watering, which from their youth they excessively delight in, and gratefully acknowledge by their growth accordingly; so as I am perswaded, that with very ordinary industry, they might be propagated to the incredible ornament of the walks and avenues to great-mens houses. The introduction of this true plane among us, is, perhaps due to the great Lord Chancellor Bacon, who planted those (still flourishing ones) at Verulam; as to mine, to that honourable gentleman, the late Sir George Crook of Oxfordshire, from whose bounty I received an hopeful plant now growing in my villa: Nor methinks should it be so great a rarity, (if it be true) that being brought from Sicily, it was planted as near us as the Morini. 3. There was lately at Basil in Switzerland, an ancient goodly _Platanetum_, and now in France they are come again in vogue: I know it was anciently accounted ἄκαρπος; but they may with us be rais’d of their seeds with care, in a moist soil, as here I have known them. But the reason of our little success, is, that we very rarely have them sent us ripe; which should be gather’d late in Autumn, and brought us from some more Levantine parts than Italy. They come also of layers abundantly, affecting a fresh and feeding ground; for so they plant them about their rivulets and fountains. The West-Indian plane is not altogether so rare, but it rises to a goodly tree, and bears a very ample and less jagged leaf: That the Turks use their _platanus_ for the building of ships, I learn out of Ricciolus _Hydrog._ l. 10. c. 37. and out of Pliny, canoos and vessels for the sea have been excavated out of their prodigious trunks. 4. The same opinion have I of the noble _lotus arbor_ (another lover of the water) which in Italy yields both an admirable shade, and timber immortal, growing to a vast tree, where they come spontaneously; but its fruit seems not so tempting as it is storied it was to the companions of Ulysses: The first who brought the lotus out of Virginia, was the late industrious Tradescant. Of this wood are made pipes, and wind-instruments, and of its root, hafts for knives and other tools, &c. The offer of Crassus to Domitius for half a dozen of these trees, growing about an house of his in Rome, testifies in what esteem they were had for their incomparable beauty and use.