156 FAMILIAR TREES 



on record. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, for instance, in 

 his edition^ of Gilpin's " Forest Scenery," mentions a 

 remarkable Sycamore, supposed to be not less than 

 300 years old, at Calder House, which, in 1799, had 

 a girth of trunk of over twenty feet, and a spread of 

 branches of sixty feet. It was the tree to which in 

 former times the iron jugs, a kind of pUlory, were 

 fastened ; but this instrument of torture had, in 1834, 

 long been grown over by the annual increment of 

 wood, and deeply imbedded in a protuberance on one 

 side of the massive bole. Another specimen in 

 Friburg, in Switzerland, over twenty-six feet in girth 

 is supposed to be 500 years old. A magnificent speci- 

 men at Studley, of unknown age, is figured in 

 Loudon's " Arboretum." It is 100 feet high, over 

 eight feet in diameter, and over ninety feet in the 

 spread of its branches. 



Though the foliage is undoubtedly dull in colour, 

 and wanting in variety of light and shade, the tree 

 as a whole, has, when well grown, considerable beauty 

 of outline. Its smooth-barked cylindrical stem rises 

 generally but a few feet from the ground before 

 sending out nearly horizontal branches, the lower of 

 which may form large limbs, reaching, as we have 

 seen, to a considerable distance from the trunk. The 

 branches lessen regularly towards the top of the 

 tree, so that standing alone in a park the Sycamore 

 presents a regular, rounded crown. The twigs are dot- 

 ted conspicuously with lenticels, and bear well-marked 

 ring scars at the base of each season's growth, with 

 V-shaped leaf-scars below the divergent bluntly ovate 

 buds. The bark and leafstalks of the young shoots 



