THE SYCAMOEE, OR GREAT MAPLE. 19 



immediately begin to be deposited and soon form a layer 

 of new wood around the edges of the wound, a great por- 

 tion of which will be found healed over, or cicatrized 

 before the fall of the leaf. 



The soil best adapted for the Sycamore, and in which it 

 attains its greatest size, appears to be a dry rich loam, 

 with a mixture of gravel. It grows, however, in almost 

 any soil not saturated with moisture, and we have seen 

 it attain a tolerable size in a stiffish clay loam, and in 

 what may be called thin and inferior soils. It is of rapid 

 growth, and reaches its usual height in sixty years ; the 

 wood, however, continues to improve till it is eighty or 

 one hundred years old, and it frequently continues un- 

 decayed for another century. 



The leaves are often covered with a clammy matter, or 

 honey-dew, eagerly sought after, and imbibed, by various 

 insects ; by some, this matter is supposed to be exuded 

 by the leaves themselves, but we believe, in common 

 with many others, that it is, generally, the product of 

 an insect, and voided by the Aphides which infest the 

 tree. It is also subject, when planted in wet and un- 

 suitable soils, to dropsy, or an oozing out of the sap 

 from the trunk, in consequence of a redundancy or an 

 improper assimilation of the juices. The leaves, also, 

 towards the end of summer, become spotted and un- 

 sightly by the growth and spreading of a parasitic species 

 of fungus, the Xyloma acerinum, Pers., which is beautifully 

 figured, by Dr. Greville, in the " Scottish Oryptogamic 

 Flora," vol. ii. p. 118. Few lepidopterous larva? feed upon 

 the leaves of the Sycamore, but of those which occasion- 

 ally do so, is that of Pygoera bucephala, the (Buff-tip moth). 

 The flowers are sweetly, but not powerfully scented ; they 

 are the resort of various hymenopterous insects, particu- 



