16 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART I. 
Trees are mentioned in the writings of Hesiod and Homer. 
The garden of Alcinous is said to have contained various sorts 
of fruit trees: and directions are given in Hesiod for lopping the 
poplar, and other species, for fuel; and felling the oak, the elm, 
and other kinds of large trees, bw timber. 
The principal trees of the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, 
were, the palm, the sycamore fig, the lote tree (Celtis australis, 
according to Mr. Hoge, Gard. °Mag., x. 291.), the olive, wae 
the pomegranate. There are, we know, several other trees which 
are natives of Egypt; but these were probably thought most 
worthy of being recorded, as producing edible fruit. 
The gardens of the Persians contained trees; and those in 
the garden of the younger Cyrus, at Sardis, were all planted with 
his own hand, in straight lines: the only mode which, at that 
early period, when scarcely any but indigenous trees were in use 
by planters, could convey the expression of art and design. In 
general, the trees which most attracted the attention of the 
ancients were those which bore edible fruits, produced spices, 
had a terebinthine odour, or possessed spreading branches to 
afford shade. Hence the frequent mention of the palm, the fig, 
the olive, the cinnamon, the camphor, the cypress, the sycamore 
fig, and the plane. 
The only positive source of information respecting the trees 
known to the nations of antiquity, down to the time of the Greeks, 
is to be found in the works of Theophrastus. Stackhouse, in his 
edition of ‘Theophrastus’s Historia Plantarum, has endeavoured 
to show the modern botanical names for the plants of which 
Theophrastus has treated. Sprengel had done the same thing 
in his Historia Ret Herbarie. Stackhouse has added to his 
own indentifications as many of those of Sprengel as are dif- 
ferent from, and supplementary to, his own. From both we 
have selected the following list of the ligneous species. Stack- 
house has stated in the preface to his second volume (his work 
is in two volumes, 1813, 1814), that Sprengel has carefully 
ascertained 357 of the kinds treated of by Theophrastus, and 
that he has passed over the rest, which are nearly as many in 
number, in silence; except remarking the circumstances which 
make them so ambiguous as to render the identifying of them 
hopeless. To some of the identifications which have been 
proposed, doubt appertains ; and, in the case of the ligneous 
species, in the enumeration below, this doubt is expressed by 
notes of interrogation. It may be observed, that the greater 
number of these plants, according to Sibthorp’s Flora Gre@ca, 
are natives of Greece, and that most of those which are not, 
will endure the open air, or are cultivated, in that country. The 
whole of them, with scarcely any exceptions, are in British 
gardens and hot-houses; and all those which we have marked 
