z68 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



and beauty, and does not impress the casual ob- 

 server as in any way odd. So successful is a grow- 

 ing limb, by means of its line of life, in maintaining 

 the pleasing effect of unity. 



The sycamore, in winter or summer, is a beauti- 

 ful tree, even the younger and slenderer ones show- 

 ing something of this tendency to explode their new 

 shoots, and opening out their heads with wide-flung 

 branches from the straight trunk which persists to 

 the top, as if to disclose the charm of the mottled 

 bark, even through the foliage. Yet, save for the 

 village of Bedford, in Westchester County, New 

 York, I cannot recall a single town here in the East 

 which has planted sycamores as an adornment 

 (those in Bedford must be almost as old as the town- 

 ship), nor a single use made of them in my part of 

 the world as a conscious addition to the landscape. 

 Those we have are mostly chance survivals down 

 along the river meadows, while we set out imported 

 exotics, or, still oftener, appear to think that land- 

 scape architecture exists rather for people who never 

 lift their eyes above chin level and should consist 

 of flower-beds and foreign shrubs. 



One trouble is, of course, that neither Rome nor 

 a sycamore was built in a day. It takes fifty years 

 to mature a white pine sufficiently to make an im- 

 pressive tree, seventy-five years to mature an elm, 

 fifty years for a rock-maple, and I don't know how 

 many years for a white oak or a cedar. One of my 

 biggest apple-trees, a grand old fellow about forty 

 feet tall, with a trunk three feet through and mus- 

 cular, sprawling branches, developed a bad frost 

 crack not long ago, which killed it, and the other 



