﻿404 T1ie Xeiv York State College of Forestry 



has preserved for us numerous ideas \vbich would have doubtless 

 been lost if they had been forced to depend alone upon verbal 

 inheritance. Another group went farther west into Italy, became 

 Empire builders, and imposed their customs upon their less 

 progressive neighbors. The Greeks reached a high plane as 

 scientists, and to them we are indebted for much of our earliest 

 botanical information. The Romans never attained as high a 

 place as iuA-estigators. They were borrowers for the most part, 

 and their chief influence is felt as missionaries whose duty it was 

 to carry Hellenic culture and science to the corners of an extensive 

 empire, as the progenitors of a lusty linguistic offspring in the 

 present Romance languages, and as the standard-bearers of a high 

 civilization and learning. The last group in which we are in- 

 terested, the Germanic or Teutonic, spread through the north of 

 Europe. They became subdivided into three main branches, the 

 high German, the Xorse Tthe Swedish, Danish, etc.), and the Low 

 German, which became again diA^ded into the Anglo-Saxon, the 

 Dutch, and Scotch. To this last group we are beholden for a very 

 large per cent, of the common names of trees. 



With this brief reA^ew of the migrations of the Aryan races we 

 may consider the origin of the names of a few trees which may 

 throw some light upon man's early botanical knowledge, his 

 migratory paths, and his contacts with other peoples. 



As might naturally be supposed only a few of these names are 

 sufficiently ancient to appear in the Sanskrit, or are distinctly 

 similar in all the Aryan branches. Many of the trees with a more 

 westerly range were, of course, unknown to the early nomads, 

 others by their lack of striking features may have escaped notice, 

 while the names of some may have been forgotten or unrecog- 

 nizably changed during the vicissitudes of prolonged migrations, 

 with their conquests and defeats. 



The characteristic and widely distributed pine was doubtless 

 well known long before the dawn of history since it is recorded 

 in Sanskrit as pitu. In the Greek -iru?, the name retains its 

 ancient form, but becomes Pinus in Latin, pin in French, and 

 pine in English. In its earlier form it may be allied to the word 

 for pain. The peculiar white bark of the birch was perhaps 

 responsible for its separation from the less spectacular trees, as 

 the primitive Aryan called it bhurjas. from bhrja. to shine. One 

 other going back to the Indo-Germanic, is darn, which means tre€ 

 or larch. The Greek represents one of the most fertile of all fields 

 owing in large part to a high scientific culture and a well developed 



