FOEESTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 301 



measure, the fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, how- 

 ever, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, 

 until comparatively recent times, been better understood than 

 sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But thig 



with characteristic modesty, deferring too readily to the authority of learned 

 philologists, he adopts their interpretation of the passage in Caesar as signify- 

 ing that Britain possessed the same forest-trees as Gaul, besides the fagiis and 

 the abies. I can by no means accept this view. We have abundant evidence 

 that both the fagus and the abies were well known as indigenous to ancient 

 Italy as well as Gaul, and Caesar must have been familiar with them both. 

 "Why, then, should he have made a special mention of these trees as common 

 to Britain and Gaul, in describing the forestal growth of both countries as the 

 same ? Professor Kolleston seems to have overlooked the observations of the 

 Danish and German forestal botanists on the succession of species in the 

 woods of their respective countries. The climate of Denmark and Britain are 

 substantially alike, and it is well established that the fir tribe is not now found 

 in the former country, where it was anciently abundant, but has been super- 

 seded in modern times by the beech. The forestal vegetation of the district 

 of Cadore, in Southern Tyrol, is historically known to have changed in the 

 Middle Ages from firs to beeches, and again from beeches to firs. See the 

 authorities cited in this note, and especially De Beranger's most erudite Giuris- 

 prudenza Forcstale. Partially fossilized remains of the palisades of ancient 

 Roman entrenched camps are said to have been found not many years since in 

 the neighborhood of Loudon. Of what wood those palisades were I have not 

 seen it stated. If a microscopic examination of such remains should show 

 that they were of a wood of spike-leaved trees, this may furnish important 

 evidence as to the existence of firs in Britain in the time of the Romans. The 

 Nuova Eivista Forestale di Vallambrosa, Anno iv., Dispensa iv., p. 153, has a 

 review of an article in the Eevue des Deux Mondes, by Broillard, from which 

 it appears that beech-woods are spontaneously propagated by self -sowing, and 

 are now supplanting the firs in the forests of France. There can be no doubt 

 that fagus means the beech, which, as the remains in the Danish peat-mosse3 

 show, is a tree of late introduction into Denmark, where it succeeded the fir, 

 a tree not now native to that country. The succession of forest crops seems 

 to have been the same ifl England ; for Harrison, p. 359, speaks of the "great 

 store of firre " found lying " at their whole lengths" in the " fens and marises" 

 of Lancashire and other counties, where not even bushes grew in his time. 

 We can not be sure what species of evergreen Caesar intended by aMes. The 

 popular designations of spike-leaved trees are always more vague and un- 

 certain in their application than those of broad-leaved trees. Pinus, pine, 

 has been very loosely employed even in botanical nomenclature, and Kiefer, 

 Fichte and Tarnie are often confounded in German. — Rossmassler, Der Wald, 

 pp. 256, 289, 324. A similar confusion in the names of this family of trees 

 exists in India. Dr. Cleghorn, Inspector-General of the Indian Forests, in 

 forms us in his official Circular No. 2, that the name of deodar is applied in 

 some provinces to a cypress, in some to a cedar, and in others to a juniper 



