This tree, in New England, is generally known and called the Button wood. Sycamore is a name often given it; and it is sometimes call Plane tree. In England it is called the Occidental Plane, to distinguish it from the European, which is called the Oriental. Plane tree or Palatane is classical, but Buttonwood is the good English descriptive name which belongs to it The Oriental Plane tree is celebrated in history, having had a place in all the public and private grounds of the Greeks and Romans, as well as of the Eastern nations. The American is not less remarkable for its size and grandeur. It is also remarkable for the rapidity of its growth, especially when standing near water in which situation it grows rapidly. It is one of the loftiest trees, and its lateral branches, being of great length, give it extraordinary breadth. It also runs up to an unusual height, compared with other trees, before it forms a head, so that its lower branches are sometimes elevated above the roofs of the houses of common height. Hence it would be a valuable tree for road sides, if it were healthy, as it would allow the largest vehicles to pass under its branches.

Loudon mentions one of these trees, standing near a pond, that had in twenty years attained a height of eighty-six feet, and a head of the diameter of forty-eight feet. The Button wood has been cultivated in England more than two hundred years.

There are few, if any, of our native forest trees more worthy of the attention of the student of nature, than the American plane-tree (Platanus occidentalis). Its broad and ample foliage, the grandeur of its proportions, and the beautifully variegated appearance which its outer bark presents, combine to render it one of the most attractive objects of American forest scenery. Not adapting itself so readily to a cultivated state as some of our native trees, to see it in all its beauty, it must be sought for in its favorite habitat, the alluvial banks of our creeks and rivers. Until the recent discovery in California of the Sequoia gigantea, the plane-tree enjoyed the distinguished honor of being the largest known tree in America. And though it must now yield the palm to its Californian rival, yet its own merits are none the less. There is now standing within two miles of the village of Wolcott, N. Y., a tree of this noble species, of such giant proportions, as to reader it worthy of being recorded among the wonders of the vegetable kingdom. The tree consists of a single trunk attaining the height, perhaps, of eighty feet, and is now lifeless and hollow throughout its entire length.

At a distance of two feet from the ground, it is thirty-three feet in circumference, and varies but little from this for some distance above. My feelings, as, in company with a few friends, I for the first time approached the old tree, bordered, I must confess, not a little npon veneration; there it stood, like a vast column rising majestically in the air, surrounded by its brethren of the forest, which, though of average size, compared with it, were pigmies. What a train of ideas enter the mind while contemplating such a tree. There it may have stood, perhaps, for a thousand years; and could it speak, what stories it might fell of past ages. It may have been a large tree when Columbus first landed on onr shores, and a moderately-sized sapling when the Northmen, from the decks of their rude ships, first saw the sombre pine forests of New England. The old tree did speak, though in a voice, perhaps, inaudible to all but the writer. It spoke of the pleasure and profit to be derived from the study of nature's works, and of the happiness of those to whom it is given to understand her mysteries.

But the old tree is dead, and soon the winds of heaven will lay its gigantic and venerable form prostrate in the dust, when mouldering back to its original elements, it will in its turn furnish sustenance for others of its species. . Thus in the economy of nature, the past is linked to the present, the dead with the living, and thus the great cycle of her operations is forever kept complete. Yours, etc.