THE SYCAMORE 155 



not leaning more to one side than another. It prop- 

 agates itself rapidly by seed, which is, as pointed out 

 by Professor Thomas Martyn, an argument against 

 its being indigenous in this country, since in that 

 case it would have been more universally dissemin- 

 ated than it is. All our early writers, indeed, speak 

 of the Sycamore as a cultivated species, from 

 Turner, in 1551, and Gerard, in 1597, to Parkinson 

 and Ray, several of these authors alluding to its value 

 in avenues and walks on account of its shade. 



The seeds and seedlings of the Sycamore are well 

 worth careful study. As the former grow to their 

 full size within the fruit, the embryo, or young plant, 

 in each of them enlarges at the expense of ..the 

 surrounding food-store ; and, as it does so, its leaves 

 or " cotyledons " become bent into a complex and vari- 

 able series of folds. On germination these two first 

 leaves unfold as two dark green strap- shaped bodies 

 utterly unlike the later-formed foliage. The second 

 pair of leaves has the colour and texture of the true 

 leaves; but, though they are broader, pointed, and 

 more Hke a leaf in veining, it is only in the third 

 pair that the typical five-pointed form is reached. 



It is a tree of rapid growth, reaching a good height 

 in a short time. Trees ten years old are recorded as 

 attaining twenty-five or twenty-eight feet in height, 

 whilst the species comes to "its full growth of from fifty 

 to sixty feet at an age of as many years. The tree 

 requires, however, to be eighty or a hundred years old 

 before its timber arrives at perfection, and the 

 ordinary longevity of the species is stated at from 140 

 to 200 years, though several cases of greater age are 



