76 ESSAYS. 
serving, lest the interests of the publisher should suffer from 
nominal connection between this work and the New Harmony 
reprint of the original Sylva, that the paper and typography 
are good, and the plates, which are colored lithographs, are 
respectable. Meanwhile the interest of the subject, and the 
well-known scientific character of the author, will commend 
the work to general attention and patronage. 
The plan and object of the late Mr. Loudon’s greatest 
work, ‘“ The Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum,” is fully 
set forth in the copious title-page. All its promises are more 
than redeemed in the execution of the work, which is truly a 
fine monument of industry and careful research. We have 
particular reasons, which will appear in the sequel, for com- 
mending this work to the notice of any readers interested in 
these subjects, who do not already possess it. By purchasing 
a copy of it, or of the valuable abridgment, the ‘ Encyclo- 
pedia of Trees and Shrubs,” a work of moderate price, they 
will render important aid to the embarrassed family of the 
author. To give some idea of the astonishing industry of the 
late Mr. Loudon in the preparation of scientific books, we ex- 
tract the following account from the “ Gardeners’ Magazine,” 
an excellent periodical, the publication of which, after it had 
continued for a period of eighteen years, terminated at the 
death of its indefatigable editor. 
“ Mr. Loudon was brought up as a landscape-gardener, and 
began to practise in 1808, when he came to England with 
numerous letters of introduction to some of the first landed 
proprietors in the kingdom. He afterwards took a large farya 
in Oxfordshire, where he resided in 1809. In the years 1813, 
1814, 1815, he made the tour of northern Europe, traversing 
Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Austria; in 1819, he traveled 
through Italy, and in 1828, through France and Germany, 
Mr. Loudon’s career as an author began in 1803, when he 
was only twenty years old; and it continued, with very little 
interruption, during the space of forty years, being only con- 
eluded by his death. The first works he published were the 
following: ‘Observations on laying out Public Squares,’ 
in 1803, and on ‘ Plantations,’ in 1804; a ‘ Treatise on Hot- 
