196 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of tillage," and considered that " nothing less than an universal 

 plantation of all the sorts of trees will supply, and well encounter 

 the defect."^ He therefore took the occasion to write Sylva and 

 to include in it — with "too much regard to the age of the moon, 

 and other niceties"- — a vast deal of curious and superficial 

 information upon all the sorts of trees of which he had know- 

 ledge. It is only in England that Evelyn has continued to 

 impose upon his public : in France and in Scotland he was soon 

 found out.^ His qualities and the defects of his qualities are 

 exhibited better in his Fumifugium, a short tract, lively and 

 readable, than in the ponderous and tedious Sylva, growing in 

 bulk with every successive edition. Evelyn, indeed, was a 

 dreamer and planner of dream cities — "this Glorious and 

 Ancient City," he exclaims, "from Wood might be rendered 

 Brick and (like another Rome) from Brick made Stone and 

 Marble." He hated coal smoke and squalor and the litter of 

 civilisation : he would have wharves and warehouses moved 

 out of London to Bankside, and offensive trades — brewers, 

 dyers, soap and salt boilers and lime-burners — removed five or 

 six miles down the river. He wished wood to be substituted as 

 far as possible for coal as household fuel, and he proposed that 

 sweet-smelling shrubs and flowers should be planted in the low 

 grounds round London.^ In all this he was, of course, wise and 

 reasonable, as a gentleman of taste should be ; but quite unfitted 

 to cope with the citizens of seventeenth-century London, who 

 rejected a much greater man's plan for rebuilding the city after 

 the Great Fire, and preferred to build on the old frontages in 

 the old narrow maze of mediaeval streets. But still Evelyn was 

 a portent : he was a gentleman writing for gentlemen, and he was 

 honoured by unflagging demands for his great work which, if 

 not greatly read — has anyone seen a really well-thumbed copy 

 of Sylva ? — at least reposed on library shelves and on country- 

 house tables. 



What is noteworthy about the seventeenth-century enthusiasts 

 is that they were acquainted with many species of trees, and 

 they were curious about their habit and characteristics : yet 



^ Sylva (1664)', pp. I, 2. 

 - Haddington, op. cit., p. 12. 



■' Ibid. : Buffon, Memorial on Preserving and Repairing Forests (printed 

 with Haddington's Treatise), p. 93. 



■* Fumifugium (1661), Introduction and pp. 5 ft", 15, 16, 24 ff. 



