NOTE 2.—­This is another subject on which a long and somewhat discursive note is inevitable.

One of the Bulletins of the Soc. de Geographie (ser.  III. tom. iii. p. 187) contains a perfectly inconclusive endeavour, by M. Roux de Rochelle, to identify the Arbre Sec or Arbre Sol with a manna-bearing oak alluded to by Q. Curtius as growing in Hyrcania.  There can be no doubt that the tree described is, as Marsden points out, a Chinar or Oriental Plane.  Mr. Ernst Meyer, in his learned Geschichte der Botanik (Koenigsberg, 1854-57, IV. 123), objects that Polo’s description of the wood does not answer to that tree.  But, with due allowance, compare with his whole account that which Olearius gives of the Chinar, and say if the same tree be not meant.  “The trees are as tall as the pine, and have very large leaves, closely resembling those of the vine.  The fruit looks like a chestnut, but has no kernel, so it is not eatable.  The wood is of a very brown colour, and full of veins; the Persians employ it for doors and window-shutters, and when these are rubbed with oil they are incomparably handsomer than our walnut-wood joinery.” (I. 526.) The Chinar-wood is used in Kashmir for gunstocks.

The whole tenor of the passage seems to imply that some eminent individual Chinar is meant.  The appellations given to it vary in the different texts.  In the G. T. it is styled in this passage, “The Arbre Seule which the Christians call the Arbre Sec,” whilst in ch. cci. of the same (infra, Bk.  IV. ch. v.) it is called “L’Arbre Sol, which in the Book of Alexander is called L’Arbre Seche” Pauthier has here “L’Arbre Solque, que nous appelons L’Arbre Sec,” and in the later passage “L’Arbre Soul, que le Livre Alexandre apelle Arbre Sec;” whilst Ramusio has here “L’Albero del Sole che si chiama per i Cristiani L’Albor Secco,” and does not contain the later passage.  So also I think all the old Latin and French printed texts, which are more or less based on Pipino’s version, have “The Tree of the Sun, which the Latins call the Dry Tree.”

[G.  Capus says (A travers le roy. de Tamerlan, p. 296) that he found at Khodjakent, the remains of an enormous plane-tree or Chinar, which measured no less than 48 metres (52 yards) in circumference at the base, and 9 metres diameter inside the rotten trunk; a dozen tourists from Tashkent one day feasted inside, and were all at ease.—­H.  C.]

Pauthier, building as usual on the reading of his own text (Solque), endeavours to show that this odd word represents Thoulk, the Arabic name of a tree to which Forskal gave the title of Ficus Vasta, and this Ficus Vasta he will have to be the same as the Chinar. Ficus Vasta would be a strange name surely to give to a Plane-tree, but Forskal may be acquitted of such an eccentricity.  The Tholak (for that seems to be the proper