i8o 
FLORA AND SYLVA 
soils of the plain, and withstands storms 
and sea-winds very well, growing high 
in the Alps of Europe and Asia, and 
proving the best of summer- leafing 
trees for our storm-swept shores. 
The tree has long been valued by 
timber-merchants and wood-workers 
for its many uses, and had it been more 
widely planted, the woods on many 
estates would have gained considerably 
in value. Mr. Batty Langley,M.P.,one 
of the largest timber-merchants in the 
country, writing lately in the Magazine 
of Commefxe upon " Re-afforestation," 
mentions the Sycamore as one of the 
"threegoldenclassesof timber" in which 
no foreign nation can equal us, only that 
we lack a sufficiency of it. In Ash, 
Sycamore, and Oak, he says we stand 
alone in our superiority. One special 
quality of the Sycamore is that there is i 
little waste in conversion, because the | 
timber is used for many purposes down , 
to its cord-wood — about 2 inches in 
diameter. 
It is strange that so usefulaforest tree, : 
which reproduces itself more readily 
perhaps than any other, should still be 
so little planted. In 1597 Gerard de- i 
scribed the Sycamore as ''a stranger to 
England," but it has had time since then 
to take the place of other less vigorous 
species if it had been encouraged. The 
Sycamore seeds so early and so abun- 
dantly, and the seedlings come up 
so thickly in woods, that the French 
foresters have come to regard it as the 
only tree likely to prove dangerous in a 
forest, if present in quantity. One 
reason perhaps, why the tree forms buta 
small proportion of the timber crops in 
this country is the failure of its wood 
to last when used out of doors ; for this 
reason it has often been regarded as a 
weed among forest-trees and rigorously 
cut down. It is certain that wherever 
a few Sycamore trees exist and scatter 
seed, thickets of young trees spring up 
even among thick bracken which 
smothers all other seedlings. I know 
many such self-sown thickets where the 
trees are dense, clean and straight, 30 
or 40 feet high and more, and one of 
the most valuable facts connected with 
such examples is that they are rarely 
injured to any great extent by rabbits, 
spite of the fact that next to the Ash 
rabbits prefer the Sycamore, often strip- 
ping felled trees from end to end. 
About 1 2oyearsago,inhis"Practical 
Treatise on Planting," Marshall pre- 
dicted a great decrease in the demand 
for Sycamore- wood as earthenware re- 
, placed the wooden bowls, platters, and 
trenchers till then in use. That he was 
, mistaken is proved by thefact that the de- 
: mandfor Sycamore exceeds the supply. 
Maple and similar American substitutes 
being irriported in large quantities to 
i take its place. Numbers of large Syca- 
mores are now used in Yorkshire and 
Lancashire alone, and the finer butts 
are frequently sold at high prices and 
carried hundreds of miles. Keighley 
in the north of Yorkshire is a great centre 
for this traffic. 
The Sycamore does well close- 
j planted, increases very fast in trunk 
I volume, equals the Oak, Ash, or Elm 
in value up to middle age, and after that 
j exceeds most other trees in its price per 
! foot. I have known mixed lots of timber 
