GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH THE TREES 



But our stately American sycamore is in a 

 different class. One never thinks of it as a 

 lawn tree, or as bordering a fashionable road- 

 way; rather the expectation is to find it along 

 a brook, in a meadow, or in some rather wild 

 and unkempt spot. As one of the scientific 

 books begins of it, "it is a tree of the first 

 magnitude." I like that expression ; for the 

 sycamore gives an impression of magnitude 

 and breadth; it spreads out serenely and 

 comfortably. 



My friend Professor Bailey says Platanus 

 occidentalls^ which is the truly right name of 

 this tree, has no title to the term sycamore ; 

 it is properly, as his Cyclopedia gives it, 

 Buttonwood, or Plane. Hunting about a little 

 among tree books, I find the reason for this, 

 and that it explains another name I have 

 never understood. The sycamore of the Bible, 

 referred to frequently in the Old Testament, 

 traditionally mentioned as the tree under which 

 Joseph rested with Mary and the young child 

 on the way to Egypt, and into which Zaccheus 

 climbed to see what was going on, was a sort 

 of fig tree "Pharaoh's Fig," in fact. When 



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