Note 327 — Chapter I · THE STEAM-SHIP “QUEEN”—THE ORKNEYS AND MAES HOWE—THE SHETLANDS AND THE FÆROE ISLANDS.

Jerome Cardan, travelling in Scotland (1552), remarked the popular fondness for the Platanus, and explains it thus: “I think they take a special delight in that tree, because its foliage is so like vine leaves.... ‘Tis like lovers, who delight in portraits when they can’t have the original.” Colonel Yule (Geograph. Mag., Sept. 1, 1874) asks whether these trees were the real plane (P. Orientalis) or the maple (Acer pseudo-platanus), commonly but erroneously so called in Scotland, and still more erroneously in England, “Sycamore.” Hence also, he observes, by propagation of error Eastern travellers translate the Persian “Chínár” (Platanus) by Sycamore.