THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 139 



congenial circumstances, the height of at least thirty 

 feet ; the sycamore grows to be seventy or eighty 

 feet high, and examples are known with trunks of 

 five or six feet in diameter. The age the latter is 

 capable of attaining appears to be fully 200 years. 

 While contrasting it with the exotic plane, it is 

 right to say here that, although perfectly at home 

 in this country, and often possessing all the 

 semblance of an ancient Briton, the sycamore also is 

 an exotic, having been introduced in the time of the 

 later crusades, from some part of central or eastern 

 Europe or western Asia, in which regions alone it is 

 truly indigenous. The maple, on the other hand, is 

 one of our veritable aborigines. Let it be added, as 

 regards the samaras, that the two trees are distin- 

 guishable by a certain difference between these parts 

 quite as readily as by the outline of their leaves. 

 The samaras of the sycamore are so placed as to 

 make a letter U, and resemble a pair of sword- 

 blades, while in the maple they spread horizon- 

 tally. Those of the former hang in racemes ; those 

 of the latter in little bunches of three or four. 



Connected with the leaves of these two trees, there 

 are one or two other circumstances deserving notice. 

 In both, they are remarkably red when first ^de- 

 veloped, giving a faint idea of what Sir Emer- 

 son Tennent states to be the customary con- 

 dition of things in the island of Ceylon. In that 

 beautiful tropic island, he says, it is not autumn 



