REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. 1 15 



REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Sylva: A Discourse on Forest Trees. By John Evelyn, F.R.S., 

 with an Essay on the Life and Worlds of the Author by 

 John Nisbet, D.CEc. A Reprint of the Fourth Edition 

 in two Vokimes. cxv + 620 pp., with two Illustrations, 

 including Portrait of John Evelyn. Arthur Doubleday and 

 Co., Ltd., London. 21s. net. 



Although this great classic of the Restoration has now lost its 

 value as a planter's guide, we extend a hearty welcome to the 

 two attractive volumes that have recently been issued by Dr 

 Nisbet as a twelfth edition. The editor has wisely — as it seems 

 to us— selected the last edition, the fourth, that was revised by 

 the author, and has presented it without notes or explanatory 

 references. There is therefore nothing to detract from the 

 perusal of Evelyn's quaint and dignified Discourse, which is as 

 fit to rivet the attention to-day as when it appeared in 1664. 

 What Dr Nisbet has to say, he says well and aptly in an 

 Litroduction that gives us a good view of the life and character 

 of Evelyn, and of the times in which he worked and wrote. 

 Evelyn's great " Treatise on Forest Trees " was preceded, by 

 fifty years, by a pamphlet written by Arthur Standish, which is 

 specially interesting at the present time, in as far as it shows 

 that even three hundred years ago an attempt was being made 

 to ascertain the extent of the waste land in the kingdom, and 

 the area that might be economically afforested. Of this 

 pamphlet, however, Evelyn seems to have known nothing. 

 His concern was to show how the national supplies of oak 

 might be maintained and increased, in order that the wants of 

 the navy might be fully satisfied. A few years after the 

 publication of his Sylva, we find him claiming that, as a result 

 of his advice, many millions of useful trees had been planted. 

 These trees would be maturing at the time of the Napoleonic 

 wars in the end of the eighteenth and early part of the nine- 

 teenth centuries, and in this way they must have had no small 

 influence on the naval shipbuilding of the time. It is therefore 

 not too much to say that the labours and teaching of Evelyn 



