Xxiii.): "The section of the Lut
has not hitherto been rediscovered, but I know that it is desert
throughout, and it is practically certain that Marco ended these unpleasant
experiences at Tabas, 150 miles from Kubenan. To-day the district is known
as Tun-o-Tabas, Kain being independent of it." - H. C.]
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.
