INTRODUCTION. 13 
infancy. An English landowner is almost always a great re- 
specter of trees generally, but seldom knows anything of par- 
ticular 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 arbo- 
retums. and collections of foreign trees and shrubs, now esta- 
blishing, 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 with- 
out 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 ac- 
quiring a scientific knowledge of the touch of trees; almost the 
only works which have noticed the subject, and gone beyond the 
