proprietor of a landed estate is either a planter, or possesses trees already planted. If he is in the former case, he will learn from this Work to combine beauty with utility, by planting, in the outer margins of his natural woods or artificial plantations, and along the open rides in them, and in the hedgerows of his lanes and public roads, trees which are at once highly ornamental and more or less useful-in some cases, perhaps, even more useful than the common indigenous trees for which they are substituted. If, on the other hand, his estate is already fully planted, he will learn from this Work how he may beautify his plantations by a mode which never yet has been applied in a general way to forest trees; viz., by heading down large trees of the common species, and grafting on them foreign species of the same genus. This is a common practice in orchards of fruit trees; and why it should not be so in parks and pleasure-grounds, along the margins of woods, and in the trees of hedgerows, no other reason can be assigned than that it has not hitherto been generally thought of. Hawthorn hedges are common everywhere; and there are between twenty and thirty beautiful species and varieties of thorn in our nurseries, which might be grafted on them. Why should not proprietors of wealth and taste desire their gardeners to graft some of the rare and beautiful sorts of tree thorns on the common hawthorn bushes, at intervals, so as to form standard trees, in such of their hedges as border public roads? And why should not the scarlet oak and the scarlet acer be grafted on the common species of these genera, along the margins of woods and plantations? Such improvements the more strongly recommend themselves, because, to many, they would involve no extra expense; and, in every case, the effect would be almost immediate. Every gardener can graft and bud; and every landed proprietor can procure stock plants from nurseries, from which he can take the grafts; or he may get scions from botanic gardens, the garden of the London Horticultural Society, that of the Caledonian Horticultural Society, or the Dublin Garden at Glasnevin.

Amateur landscape-gardeners, and architects who lay out the grounds of the houses they have designed, will be enabled, by this Work, to choose the kinds of trees which they think will produce the best effect in their plantations; and, what is of much more consequence, which will produce a certain effect within a given number of years. Indeed, the want of such a Work as the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum to professional landscapegardeners, and a conviction of the great use it would be of to practical gardeners, and to all persons engaged in laying out grounds, or in forming ornamental plantations, first suggested to us the idea of commencing the Work.

In modern landscape-gardening, considered as a fine art, all the more important beauties and effects produced by the artist

may be said to depend on the use which he makes of foreign trees and shrubs. Our reasons for this are grounded on the principle that all art, to be acknowledged as such, must be avowed. This is the case in the fine arts: there is no attempt to conceal art in music, poetry, painting, or sculpture; none in architecture; and none in the geometrical style of landscapegardening. Why should there be an attempt to conceal art in modern landscape-gardening? Because, we shall be told, it is an art which imitates nature. But, does not landscape-painting also imitate nature; and yet, in it, the work produced is acknowledged to be one of art? Before this point is settled, it is necessary to recur to what is meant by the imitation of nature, and to reflect on the difference between repetition and imitation. In what are called the imitative arts, it will be found that the imitation is always made in such a manner as to produce a totally distinct work from the thing imitated; and never, on any account, so like as to be mistaken for it. In landscape-painting, scenery is represented by colours on a flat surface; in sculpture, forms, which in nature are coloured, are represented in colourless stone. The intention of the artist, in both cases, is not to produce a copy which shall be mistaken for the original, but rather to show the original through the medium of a particular description of art; to reflect nature as in a glass. Now, to render landscape-gardening a fine art, some analogous process must be adopted by the landscape-gardener. In the geometrical style, he has succeeded perfectly, by arranging grounds and trees in artificial surfaces, forms, and lines, so different from nature as to be recognised at once as works of art. A residence thus laid out is clearly distinguished from the woody scenery of the surrounding country; and is satisfactory, because it displays the working of the human mind, and confers distinction on the owner as a man of wealth and taste. A residence laid out in the modern style, with the surface of the ground disposed in imitation of the undulations of nature, and the trees scattered over it in groups and masses, neither in straight lines, nor cut into artificial shapes, might be mistaken for nature, were not the trees planted chiefly of foreign kinds not to be met with in the natural or general scenery of the country. Every thing in modern landscape-gardening, therefore, depends on the use of foreign trees and shrubs; and, when it is once properly understood that no residence in the modern style can have a claim to be considered as laid out in good taste, in which all the trees and shrubs employed are not either foreign ones, or improved varieties of indigenous ones, the grounds of every country seat, from the cottage to the mansion, will become an arboretum, differing only in the number of species which it contains.

Though a taste for trees has existed from the earliest ages, that taste, in this country at least, may still be considered in its

infancy. An English landowner is almost always a great respecter of trees generally, but seldom knows anything of particular sorts: he, therefore, cares very little for their individual beauties, and contents himself with being an indiscriminate admirer of them. Hence the unwillingness of most persons to cut down trees, however improperly they may be placed; or to thin out plantations, however much they may be crowded, and however great may be the injury which the finer foreign sorts are sustaining from the coarser-growing indigenous kinds. This indiscriminate regard for trees, and morbid feeling with reference to cutting them down when they are wrongly placed or too thick, principally results from ignorance of the kinds and of the relative beauty of the different species, and from want of taste in landscape-gardening. When we consider that it is not much above a century since American trees began to be purchasable in the nurseries of this country, this is not to be wondered at; and, more especially, when it is remembered that planters, generally speaking, have few opportunities of seeing specimens of these trees, so as to become acquainted with them, and thus to acquire a taste for this kind of beauty and its pursuit. The public botanic and horticultural gardens, and the private arboretums and collections of foreign trees and shrubs, now establishing throughout the country; and the mode now becoming general among nurserymen, of planting specimen trees in their nurseries; will tend to remedy this defect, by exhibiting living specimens: and our Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum will, we trust, aid in attaining the same end.

To artists, the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum will not be without its use. It is well known that there are but few landscape-painters who possess that kind of knowledge of trees which is necessary to enable them to produce such portraits as would indicate the kind to a gardener or a forester. This defect, on the part of landscape-painters, arises partly from their copying from one another in towns, rather than from nature in the country; but, principally, from their want of what may be technically called botanical knowledge. The correct touch of a tree, to use the language of art, can no more be acquired without studying the mode of foliation of that tree, than the correct mouldings of a Grecian or Gothic cornice can be understood or represented without the study of Grecian or Gothic architecture. It is for this reason that it will always be found that ladies who reside in the country, and have studied botany, if they have a taste for landscape, will imitate the touch of trees better than professional landscape-painters. We assert it as a fact, without the least hesitation, that the majority of British artists (we may say, of all artists whatever) do not even know the means of acquiring a scientific knowledge of the touch of trees; almost the only works which have noticed the subject, and gone beyond the

mere surface, being the Remarks on Forest Scenery, by Gilpin; and Kennion's Essay on Trees in Landscape. The perusal of the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, and the comparison of the botanical specimens with the touch to which they give rise in the portraits, will enable artists to investigate from our figures, and afterwards from nature, those differences in the points of the shoots, in the clustering and form of the foliage, and between the appearance of the foliage of spring and that of autumn, which give rise to the difference of touch necessary to characterise a species, and to mark the season of the year. Most artists who have studied trees from nature can give the touch of the oak with characteristic expression; and, by the study of the details of other trees, they may attain a touch which shall characterise them with equal force and accuracy. There is no work extant, however, from which an artist can study, correctly and scientifically, the touch of more species of trees than the oak, the ash, the weeping willow, and one or two others. In proof of this we may refer to the plates in Kennion's work above referred to, as one of the latest and best, where the engravings, in the greater number of instances, have not the slightest resemblance to the trees the names of which are written beneath them. How, under these circumstances, is it possible for an artist, who is not a botanist, and who does not reside in the country, to study the touch of trees? By the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum he may acquire as much botanical knowledge as will enable him to distinguish with certainty all the different species of trees to be found in this country; and he will see, in the engravings of the botanical specimens as they appear in autumn, the foundations laid in nature for the different descriptions of touch. The London artist, in addition to the botanical knowledge which he may acquire from our work, may have recourse to the specimen trees (all near London) from which our portraits were taken. Artists generally, by becoming botanically acquainted with the trees, will be able to recognise them in their walks, or professional excursions; to study them under various circumstances, and, when they introduce them in their landscapes, to give their characters with fidelity.

Hitherto there has not been a sufficient demand for this kind of skill on the part of the artist; but, as foreign trees become better known by the public generally, it will be necessary for artists to keep their art on a level with the state of knowledge of the times in which they live. As the foreign trees which are every year being introduced into the country advance in size, the truth of this remark will become more and more obvious.

Having now given a general outline of the plan of our Work, and of the manner in which we propose to carry that plan into execution, we shall next proceed with PART I.

15

PART I.

GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF THE TREES AND SHRUBS OF TEMPERATE CLIMATES.

THE use of the slight general outline which we propose now submitting to the reader is, partly, to show the consideration in which trees have been held in all ages and countries; but principally to record what has been done in the introduction of foreign trees into Britain; and to point out, from the ligneous productions of other countries having similar climates, what remains to be accomplished. We shall first notice to what extent a love for, and a knowledge of, trees existed among the nations of antiquity; and, next, give a general idea of the indigenous and introduced trees of those countries occupied by the modern nations of Europe. We shall commence with Britain; and shall take, in succession, France, Germany, and the other European countries. Afterwards, we shall give a slight sketch of the trees suited to temperate climates which are natives of Asia, Africa, America, and Australia.

CHAP. I.

OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF TREES AND SHRUBS WHICH EXISTED AMONG THE NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY.

THE first notices which we have of trees are in the Sacred Writings. The tree of knowledge, and the circumstance of our first parents hiding themselves among the trees of the garden of Eden, are familiar to every one. Solomon appears to have collected all kinds of plants, and not only to have had an orchard of fruit trees, and trees bearing spices, but to have included in his grounds what are called barren trees, and among these the cedar. As this tree is a native of a cold and mountainous country at some distance from Judea, it shows that the practice of collecting trees from a distance, and from a different climate, to assemble them in one plantation or arboretum, is of the earliest date. The cedar, indeed, is frequently mentioned in Scripture; and both that and the fir (including, under this name, probably both Pinus and Abies, for some species of both are natives of Asia Minor and Greece) are said, in the book of Ezekiel, to be frequent in magnificent gardens. Large trees were then used as places for meeting under (as they are, in the East, to this day); and they were then, as now, planted in

cemeteries