24 
DERIVATIONS OF THE LATIN NAMES OF PLANTS. 
regarded such humble objects, how much more has He accounted worthy of His 
beneficence the more highly-destined orders of His creation!” 
To the admirers of the picturesque, to the lovers of human nature imbued 
with its most amiable attributes, the Maple has acquired additional interest, 
since beneath its shade, in Boldre Church-yard, are deposited the remains of the 
pious Gilpin. There rests from his useful labours the exemplary parish priest, 
and the able illustrator of the circumjacent-scenery. 
Acer joseudo-platanus, Greater Maple, Mock Plane-tree, Sycamore.—This 
tree flourishes best in open places and sandy grounds ; but will thrive very well 
in richer soil. It grows quick—is easily transplanted—bears cropping—and grass 
flourishes under its shade. It is said to grow better near the sea than in any 
other situation, and that a plantation of these trees at fifty feet asunder, with 
three Sea Sallow-thorns between every two of them, will make a fence sufficient 
to defend the herbage of the country from the spray of the sea {Gent. Mag., 1757, 
p. 252.). The wood is soft and very white. The turners form it into bowls, 
trenchers, &c. (the use of which is frequently mentioned by both ancient and 
modern poets). If a hole is bored into the body of the tree when the sap rises 
in spring, it discharges a considerable quantity of sweetish watery liquor, which 
is used in making wines, and affords a fine white sugar (though the produce is 
far less abundant than that from the North American Acer saccharinum , the 
proper Sugar Maple), the art of extracting which was known to the aboriginal 
tribes; and some quantity has been for many years sent to France to be refined. 
The polen appears globular in the microscope, but, if touched with moisture, 
these globules burst open with four valves which assume the form of a cross. 
Scarabceus melolontha feeds upon the leaves. The seed of the Sycamore affords a 
pleasing instance of the care that Nature takes for the preservation of her infant 
germs. In the seed (soaked in warm water) we shall find the radicle and long 
radical leaves of the future plant folded up in an extraordinary manner, with the 
minute leaves that are to succeed them folded in their bosom; these radical leaves 
are beautifully green, a circumstance not to be expected, as all light is excluded 
by three coatings, and a woolly wrap that invests them. The bounty and 
wisdom of Providence in nothing is more remarkably manifest than in the intel¬ 
ligence displayed, and the provision appointed, for the young of organized and 
inanimate nature. The egg of a bird or insect, or the seed of a plant, should 
alone humble to the dust the arrogance of man.— Nat. Diary, T. T. 1824. 
The Sj^camore would appear to have been originally an exotic, gradually 
introduced into Britain for ornament and shade. Turner and Evelyn deny 
its being indigenous, and Parkinson in 1640 says, “It is no where found wild 
or natural in our land that I can learn, but only planted in orchards or walks 
for shadowe’s sake.” It was little known in England so late as the seventeenth 
