The sycamore (Arab, gimmis) is in girth the largest of
Egyptian trees, specimens of it from twenty -five to thirty
feet in circumference being sufficiently common. Its
trunk, on the other hand, is short, and its branchea
spread out almost horizontally, forming with their thick
evergreen foliage an impervious shade from even a
Cairene sun. The beautiful avenue on the Shoubra road
is composed of these trees and acacias, which, arching and
interlapping overhead, form a splendid natural gaUery
nearly four miles long, that even in midsummer affords
the cool gloom of a cathedral cloister. Sycamore-wood



330 EOTPT AS IT 18.
is rot-proof, and in old times was therefore much used for
mummy-cases. It is now chiefly employed in the con-
struction of gun-carriages and water-wheels. A coarse
kind of fig grows upon the trunk of the tree, but does
not ripen unless cut.
As the sycamore is the largest, so is the broad-podded
acacia (Arab. lebbeTc) the prettiest native tree of Egypt.
It is also an evergreen, and, as it grows rapidly if well
watered, it has been largely planted round the new villas
and along the boulevards which within recent years have
so modernised Alexandria and Cairo. What the syca-
more, too, has done for the Shoubra road, this tree is fast
effecting for the long causeway from the Nile bridge to
the Pyramids, which is already nearly as completely
shaded for more than half its length by a double row of
fine thriving lebteks.
The Acacia nilotica, o°i thorny smaU-leaved acacia
(Arab, sanf), a congener of the last, is found almost every-
where, but attains its finest development ia Lower Egypt.
