Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/18

2 call it the Oriental Plane-tree. The leaves being rubbed have a fine balsamic smell, with an orange flavour. It produces an excellent white turpentine; especially when any incisions are made in the bark. I suppose it is from this that they extract a very fine perfumed oil, which, they say, as well as the wood, has the virtue of fortifying the heart and brain. The common people here cut off the bark and wood together, toast it in the fire, and suck it, which they esteem a specific remedy in a fever, and seem to think that it has a miraculous operation.”

So far Dr. Pococke, who in the 2d part of the same vol. p. 188, mentions this tree again, and, in plate 89, gives a tolerable, but not precisely botanical figure of it. This plate is cited by Willdenow, ''Sp. Pl. vol.'' 4. 475, as a representation of the ''Liquidambar imberbe, Ait. Hort. Kew, ed.'' 1. vol. 3. 365. That author perceiving it to be no Platanus, but rather a Liquidambar, reasonably enough concluded it to represent the Oriental, rather than the American, species of that genus. The figure, though drawn and engraved by Ehret, is not sufficiently accurate to determine so nice a point. As it does not show the hairiness about the veins of the leaves, which distinguishes the occidental Liquidambar from the oriental, Willdenow is the more excusable; though the outline of the foliage agrees best with the former.

Dr. Sibthorp, in his visit to Cyprus, was anxious to ascertain the tree mentioned by Pococke, and the result of his inquiry cannot be better related than in the words of his manuscript journal.

"April 19, 1785, at eight in the morning we left Upreva, and, passing through the vales below, gradually ascended the mountains of Antiphoniti. At noon we arrived at the convent, most romantically situated among the mountains, with a view of the sea, and a distant sight of the mountains of Caramania. I was Rh