PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. \) 



remnants of the Old Forest of Coquet were upon every breeze, to 

 which the aromatic foliage and shoots of the wild-briar, the 

 flowers of the hagberry (Prunus PadicsJ, hawthorn, and sycamore, 

 largely contributed. Upon the leaves of the latter there was a 

 copious honey-dew, deposited by numerous Aphides, which, occu- 

 pying the under-sides of each leaf, protects the humid liquid upon 

 the surfaces of those below. But for the timely relief aff'orded 

 to bees, by this honey-dew upon the sycamore, the result of 

 the great production of Aphides, during the last three weeks 

 of moist cloudy weather, there must have been a very exten- 

 sive mortality indeed in our apiaries ; and it is undoubtedly a 

 beautiful compensation of Providence, that the very clouds which 

 render flowers almost destitute of honey, produce an accumu- 

 lation of watery sap in the foliage of the sycamore and other 

 maples, which again favours the development of the countless 

 tribe of Aphides, the parents of that honey-dew which saves so 

 many hives in their extremity, at a season when the young bees 

 require an unceasing supply of food. 



" In regard to the sycamore, I cannot help here observing, that, 

 in the plains of Germany and Northern Trance, it is a rare tree, 

 occurring only where planted. In the hill-woodlands, it is fre- 

 quently met with growing wild, as in Ardennes, the Odenwald, 

 the Black Eorest, and in Switzerland. But nowhere in these 

 central parts of Europe does it seem so common in a wild state 

 as in the woodlands of Wales and Cumberland, and in many 

 parts of the West and North of England. Very probably, when 

 nursery gardens were rare about London, young sycamores, with 

 limes, horse chesnuts, poplars, and other ornamental trees, for parks 

 and avenues, might be sent from the Netherlands and Germany 

 (where nursery gardens were of earlier date) into England; and 

 hence an idea would arise that the tree itself was exotic, especially 

 as it is really hardly wild near the metropolis. I cannot conceive 

 any other foundation for the notion of its not being as much a 

 British tree as the ash or the birch. There are probably more 

 self-sown sycamores in Wales, than in any tract of Continental 

 Europe, of the like extent. There too it has its own ancient 

 appellation. In Ireland again it occurs abundantly." 



VOL. III. PART I. B 



