JANUARY 275 



The trunk at the base, if large enough, 

 always retains a covering of dark brown, 

 old bark. During some winters the white 

 creeps ever so much farther down the trees 

 than it does during others. The winter of 

 ninety-nine and nineteen hundred was the 

 "whitest" winter for sycamore trees in my 

 recollection, and many good-sized trees 

 were clean almost to the ground. By the 

 next year the color had crept up much 

 farther, and kept going up for several years. 

 There is one quality in the sycamore tree 

 from which we must withhold our admira- 

 tion : it is unusually apt to be decayed at the 

 heart. Whole trees are often mere shells, 

 the hollow centre having served perhaps as 

 the chimney to the fireplace' used by care- 

 less hunters or thoughtless boys. One 

 scarcely sees how the tree can suffer it and 

 live. In one of the New Jersey towns there 

 is an old buttonwood that showed consider- 

 able internal decay. The owners, anxious 

 to preserve a tree that had become historic, 

 put a man inside the trunk, who cut out all 

 the decayed wood and filled the cavity 



