Linnean System of Plants. 14] 
liness of their dress and jewels. The sycamore is one of the 
few trees that thrive best by the sea-side, and being large and 
leafy, may be employed to defend weaker plants from the winds 
and salt spray. It is a fine tree when its robes are new; but 
late in the season is commonly clothed in rags; the fragrance 
of the leaves attracting various insects, which } perforate them in 
every part, until they have reduced them to the most jagged 
condition. This tree, like others of its genus, affords a quan- 
tity of saccharine juice, which, by evaporation, may be reduced 
to sugar, but is more commonly converted into wine. The 
species termed the sugar maple (4. saccharinum) is a North 
American species, from which many of the inhabitants of that 
country manufacture their own sugar. Each tree produces 
from twenty to thirty gallons of juice, pleasantly flavoured, and 
sometimes drunk fresh as a remedy for the scurvy. 
In speaking of foreign productions of this class we may say 
that the number of heaths alone exceeds that of all the species 
of the other genera united; and though there is a general 
and strong family likeness among them, there is also great 
variety. 
The nasturtium, Tropze‘olum (the diminutive of tropeum, 
atrophy), is a Peruvian genus, of 
which some of the species are as 
well known in this country as if 
they were natives; the greater 
nasturtium more especially. The 
seed-vessels are pungent, and 
much esteemed for pickling ; and 
the flowers are among the most 
splendid to be seen in our gar- 
dens ; they look like blossoms of 
fire, and it seems quite in cha- 
racter that they should emit sparks 
in the evening, as they were ob- 
served to do by the daughter of 
Linneus. This plant affords a 
familiar example of the peltate leaf (target-shaped, from pelta, 
a target), a leaf which has its foot-stalk inserted in or near the 
centre. (jig. 29.) 
The genus dmyris is known by some minor articles of 
commerce which it produces: though of one of them, the 
Balsam, or Balm, of Gilead, which is the dried juice obtained 
from the bark of one of the species, it is believed, that it is too 
scarce to be frequently exported genuine from its native 
country. From the earliest periods of antiquity till the present 
day, this balm has been held in great estimation in Syria and 
