128 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



Dendrology. Almost an undue proportion of Theophrastus' 

 space is given to the consideration of trees. He appears to have 

 been a great lover of them ; and his knowledge of them is presented 

 with so much system that at least a considerable dendrological 

 paragraph becomes a necessity if one is to convey any adequate 

 notion of his botanical work as a whole. He classifies them (i) as 

 cultivated and wild. This is one of his general divisions of all 

 kinds of plants; one that has already been sufficiently discussed in 

 another place. Trees are (2) deciduous or evergreen. Their 

 diversity as to tenure of foliage is so thoroughly discussed, and 

 withal so judiciously, that the more than two millenniums that have 

 passed seem to have recorded but few and unimportant additions 

 or amendments to the principles of this chapter as he left it. ^ Ad- 

 hering to his classification of all things as cultivated and wild, he 

 gives two lists of trees that are evergreen; the olive, palm, sweet 

 bay, myrtle, the cypress, and our pine among the domesticated; 

 for the wild, the fir and spruce, wild pine, certain kinds of oak, 

 holly, box, and the arbutus tree. The last, he says, sheds the 

 foliage from its lowest branches, while the head of the tree remains 

 evergreen. This distinction of evergreen and deciduous he regards 

 upon the whole as quite natural and valid, despite reports he has 

 heard, and readily accepts as probably true, that in the warmest 

 climates grape vines and fig trees shed their leaves so tardily as to 

 seem almost evergreen. He has observed that, among perfectly 

 familiar species, some regularly divest themselves of all foliage 

 in earliest autumn, others later, while a few habitually retain it 

 until winter has begun. He can therefore credit those who assert 

 the existence, in other lands, of kinds that do not cast their old 

 leaves until near the time of the development of the new in spring. 

 He has even found out that the most strictly evergreen develop 

 one new set of leaves, and as invariably lose one old set, every 

 year. Upon deciduous trees and shrubs he seems to have kept 

 phenologic records. He relates that certain kinds come into leaf 

 early, others late; also that such as are first in leaf in the spring 

 are not the first to shed their foliage in autumn, and it is equally 

 established, that those latest in leaf do not retain them longer than 

 others. He has likewise learned that trees in a moist climate and 

 soil retain their foliage for the longest period, while deciduous 

 things of a dry soil and poor shed their leaves earliest of all; and 

 finally, that a young tree keeps its foliage until a later date than 

 does an old one. The foliage of evergreens is usually narrower 

 ' Hist., Book i, ch. i^. 



