Of shapely form and graceful mien;
And willows with their trunks of green,
Whose branches of bright orange dye

With tints of brighter crimson vie."

Our old herbalists describe the leaves of this plant as "excellent good" for the liver and the spleen, and the roots were considered to be, when bruised, a valuable application for various pains. The sweet milky juice with which it abounds would, if extracted during winter, furnish a small quantity of sugar. This juice renders the leaf obnoxious to insects; and Linnæus much recommended the growth of this tree, both on that account and for its timber, adding that its juice might also be rendered of use. The timber forms an excellent fuel, giving great warmth as it slowly burns. The musical instrument and cabinet maker make much use of it; and good wooden platters are still made of it, though not so frequently as they were in days when earthenware was little used. One great charm of the tree in the olden times has been lost by the increase of knowledge. Our fathers believed, as they sat beneath its shade, that they were looking up into the boughs of the kind of tree in which Zaccheus hid himself, to see our Saviour pass by; but it is now well known that the Sycamore of Scripture is a species of fig-tree. Our tree often lives from a hundred to a hundred and fifty years, and even much older trees are on record.

Some very large Sycamores are described as having grown in various parts of this kingdom. One mentioned by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, at Calder House, in the county of Edinburgh, measured in October 1799

seventeen feet seven inches in girth, its trunk being about twelve feet high, and its branches extending to a distance of sixty feet in diameter. This tree is known to have existed before the Reformation, and is therefore not less than three hundred years old; yet it has the appearance of being perfectly sound. This was the tree to which in former years the iron jugs, a species of pillory, were fastened; and as the tree gradually grew over them, they have now long been completely enclosed in its trunk, a large protuberance on the surface marking the place at which they are embedded in the wood. "But the most remarkable Sycamores in Scotland," says the Rev. C. A. Johns, in his "Forest Trees of Britain," "are those which are called Dool trees.' They were used by the most powerful barons in the west of Scotland for hanging their enemies and refractory vassals on, and were for this reason called dool, or grief-trees. Of these there are three yet standing, the most memorable being one near the fine old castle of Cassillis, one of the seats of the Marquis of Ailsa, on the bank of the river Doon. It is not so remarkable for its girth of stem, as for its wide-spreading branches and luxuriant foliage, among which from twenty to thirty men could be easily concealed. It was used by the family of Kennedy, who were the most powerful barons of the west of Scotland, for the purpose abovementioned. The last occasion was about two hundred years ago, when Sir John Fau of Dunbar was hanged upon it, for having made an attempt, in the disguise of a gipsey, to carry off the then Countess of Cassillis, who was the daughter of the Earl of Haddington, and to

whom he had been betrothed prior to his going abroad to travel. Having been detained for some years a prisoner in Spain, he was supposed to be dead, and in his absence the lady married John Earl of Cassillis. It is said that the lady witnessed the execution of her former lover from her bedroom window."

The leaves of the Sycamore are often rendered clammy to the touch by the sweet substance called honey-dew, and plants growing beneath are frequently much injured by the dropping of this sweet liquid. This honey-dew has by many writers been believed to be caused by aphides, but others consider it to be a natural secretion from the leaf of this and other trees. Pliny gravely hesitated whether he should regard this exudation as the "sweat of the heavens, the saliva of the stars, or a liquid produced by the purgation of the air." Professor Burnett thinks that some kinds of honey-dew may be owing to the deposition of some of those minute lichenlike plants, which seem to be chiefly of meteoric origin and atmospheric growth, and which occasionally occur in vast profusion. Some persons are even of opinion that those airy lines, which sometimes at early morning seem spread like a gauzy veil over the meadows, looking as if the spiders had brought to every blade of grass a delicate tracery, have this meteoric origin. It does not appear, however, that the honey-dew on the Sycamore leaf is of this nature, and our recent naturalists seem to regard it as an exudation of the plant itself.

Very frequently also, in autumn, the foliage of the Sycamore is more or less disfigured by a black fungus, which gives to the leaves the appearance of having had

large drops of ink scattered upon them. In some seasons these spots are very abundant, and in one year the author saw a row of Sycamores in which almost every leaf was thus disfigured, so as to attract the notice of those who rarely observed plants. This fungus is the Xylonia acerinum, and when observed with a powerful microscope, is seen to be a curled tubercle, with a rugged border. The leaves so affected fall off at the first frost, and these spots then gradually corrode their entire substance.

The Sycamore-tree is never more attractive than in the early spring, when the young, tender, green foliage is shooting forth, and when the small pink scales, which at first envelope the handsome lobed leaf, are just being scattered around the tree by every gust of wind. When autumn is on its way, the more sober red of the gradually ripening winged seed-vessels, as well as the varied hues of the foliage, are also very ornamental among the deepening tints of the wood. described it as

"The Sycamore, capricious in attire,

Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet

Has changed the wood, in scarlet honours bright."

Cowper

ORDER XX. GERANIACEÆ.-GERANIUM

TRIBE.

Sepals 5, not falling, ribbed, overlapping when in bud; petals 5-clawed, twisted while in bud; stamens 10, often alternately imperfect, usually united by their fila

ments; ovary of 5 carpels, placed round a long awlshaped beak; styles 5, united to the beak; stigmas 5; fruit beaked, separating into 5 capsules at the base of the beak, and terminating in a long awn, which finally curls up, bearing with it the capsule. This is a large Order, composed chiefly of herbaceous plants, but comprehending also a few shrubs. The genera are distributed over various parts of the world, a great number of them being found at the Cape of Good Hope. These are chiefly the Pelargoniums, which are the plants usually called Geraniums, some of which are to be found in most gardens, and which are the commonest of window plants. The genera Erodium and Geranium are mostly natives of Europe, North America, and Northern Asia. A slight degree of astringency and acidity is possessed by the Geranium, and a fragrant essential oil has been distilled from Pelargonium odoratissimum, which is said somewhat to resemble attar of roses, and to be quite as pleasant. Another species of this genus, Pelargonium cucullatum, has been regarded as an emollient, and the ground tubercles of P. hirsutum are esculent, and much prized by the Arabs as food. The leaves of the common scarlet Geranium, the bright flowers of which are to be seen in many a cottage window, have in some recent scientific works been much extolled as remedies to be laid upon the wound inflicted by any sharp instrument. The whole tribe is innocuous, but their chief value consists in the lovely flowers with which they deck our lanes and meadows, or, as in the Pelargoniums, with which they grace our gardens, rooms, and greenhouses.