22G SYLVA FLORIFERA. 



until after the March winds are exhausted; and 

 it sheds its foliage in the autumn, before the 

 equinoctial gales commence. The tree is of 

 quick growth; and if we may judge from those 

 in the master's piece, at Sidney-Sussex col- 

 lege, in Cambridge, it is durable, as those trees 

 were planted in 1607. That sycamore-trees 

 may be planted to considerable advantage in 

 many situations, may be judged from a state- 

 ment that is made in a work entitled " Practi- 

 cal Economy," which tells us, that a piece of 

 ground in Scotland, not worth thirty shillings 

 per acre, for agricultural purposes, was planted 

 with sycamores, and at the end of sixty years 

 the trees fetched such a sum as paid fourteen 

 pounds per acre per annum during that long 

 period. 



The flowers of the sycamore-tree are sus- 

 pended in long bunches, and usually blow 

 about the end of April, when, if their pollen 

 be obtained and viewed through a microscope, 

 each particle will be found of a globular 

 shape ; but if it be touched with any thing 

 moist, the globules burst open with four 

 valves, and they appear in form of a cross. 



" What vast perfection cannot nature crowd 



Into a puny point !" Hurdis. 



These trees are propagated by gathering 





