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THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 



JUST as men have their periods of worldly success, or of public honour, 

 or of fame in art or in literature, at very various ages (showing that 

 there is no necessai'y connection between the number of birthdays and 

 the hour of triumph), so is it with the special glory or beauty of trees, 

 considered in relation to their annual history : some, that is to say, 

 are most charming at the time of their earliest leaf, the beech to wit ; 

 others look best when the foliage is mature ; others when they are in 

 blossom ; others, again* when the fruit is ripe. The maple and the 

 sycamore belong to a section which appeals to us most powerfully 

 when the flowering is over, and the seed-vessels, fully formed, but still 

 only incipient, begin to display themselves among the green. For 

 though pretty in their way, and conspicuous from their abundance, at 

 all events in the sycamore, the flowers of these two trees make a very 

 trifling show; while in the figure of the leaves, in the ripened fruit, and 

 even in the autumnal tinting of the former, there is nothing by which 

 they would at once be singled out from the mass. Look at them, 

 however, about the time that the laburnums have ceased their rain of 

 gold, when the ferns are fast unrolling, and " the first rose of summer, 

 sweet blooming alone," steps forth in the hedgerow like a planet in 

 the evening sky, and whatever they were before, now they seem decked 

 in every part with lively bloom. The colour and the gaiety are given 

 by the clusters of rudimentary fruit, which in the maple is brownish- 

 red, and in the sycamore pinky-yellow. Sometimes the display is 

 delayed a little, but the fact remains the same that these two trees 

 make more show during the period of gestation than during any other 

 portion of their active life. By the peculiar form of the fruit they are 

 at once distinguished also from every other kind of tree which grows, 

 either wild or as a colonist, in Great Britain. Instead of some sort of 

 nut or acorn, like that of the oak ; instead of a cone, or a catkin, or a 



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