THE SYCAMORE. 



Acer Pseudo-Platanus. 



Natural Order — Acerine^. 

 Class — OcTANDRiA. Order — Monogynia. 



If in my history of forest-trees I were to confine 

 myself to those which are universally acknow- 

 ledged to be indigenous to Britain, I should soon 

 bring my labours to a close. England, though 

 once a well-wooded country, never probably could 

 boast of containing wdthin it any great variety of 

 species. The Oak, fortunately, no one thinks of 

 denying to be our fellow-countryman : if any one 

 were bold enough to do so, we could easily refute 

 him by pointing to living trees older than any of 

 our national records ; or, if that did not sufhce, to 

 trunks of trees preserved in peat bogs, which w^ere 

 prostrated on their native soil centuries, probably, 

 before the acorns were planted from which any 

 trees now living sprung. But this is not the case 

 with the Sycamore. No writer on the subject, so 

 far as I can learn, looks on this tree in any other 

 light than as a foreigner, but as a foreigner na- 

 turalized so completely that it wdll continue to 

 sow its own seeds and nurse its own offspring, as 

 long as England exists. The Oak, indeed, has 

 greater right to claim an indigenous origin than 

 we ourselves. There can be httle doubt that the 



