[1371]. Geop. x. 76.
[1372]. Introduced by Dionysios the elder into Rhegium, where it attained, however, no great size. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 5. 6. The same naturalist speaks of two plane trees, the one at Delphi, the other at Caphyæ in Arcadia, said to have been planted by the hand of Agamemnon, which were still flourishing in his own days, iv. 13. 2. This tree attains a prodigious size in Peloponnesos. Chandler, Travels, ii. 308. Our traveller was prevented from measuring the stem by the fear of certain Albanian soldiers who lay asleep under it; but Theophrastus gives us the dimensions of a large platane, at Antandros, whose trunk, he says, could scarcely be embraced by four men, while its height before the springing forth of the boughs was fifteen feet. Having described the dimensions of the tree, he relates a very extraordinary fact in natural history, namely, that this platane, having been blown down by the winds and lightened of its branches by the axe, rose again spontaneously during the night, put forth fresh boughs, and flourished as before. The same thing is related of a white poplar in the museum at Stagira, and of a large willow at Philippi. In this last city a soothsayer counselled the inhabitants to offer sacrifice, and set a guard about the tree, as a thing of auspicious omen. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 16. 2, seq. Cf. Plin. xvi. 57. In corroboration of the narrative of Theophrastus, Palmerius relates, that, during the winter of 1624–25, while Breda was besieged by Ambrosio Spinola, he himself saw in Brabant an oak twenty-five feet high, and three feet in circumference, overthrown by the wind, and recovering itself exactly in the manner described by the great naturalist. The vulgar, who regarded it as a miracle, preserved portions of its bark or branches as amulets.—Excercitationes, p. 598.
[1373]. Plut. Sympos. ii. 6. 7.
[1374]. “It is reported,” observes Lord Bacon, “that, in the low countries, they will graft an apple scion upon the stock of a colewort, and it will bear a great flaggy apple, the kernel of which, if it be set, will be a colewort and not an apple.” Sylva Sylvarum, 453.
[1375]. Geop. x. 20. 1. Varro. i. 59. Mustea (mala) a celeritate mitescendi: quæ nunc melimela dicuntur, a sapore melleo.—Plin. xv. 15. Dioscor. i. 161.
[1376]. Plut. Sympos. ii. 6. 1.
[1377]. Geop. x. 19. 15, cum not. Niclas.
[1378]. Inseritur vero ex fœtu uncis arbutus horrida. Virg. Georg. ii. 69, with the note of Servius.
[1379]. Plut. Sympos. ii. 6. 1.
[1380]. Plin. xvii. 14.