218 LITERATURE OF SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURE. 



After the discovery of the art of printing in 1438, and its intro- 

 duction into this country about the year 1471, we are ahle to trace 

 the development of arhoricultural study in Scotland, and notice 

 the attention which was paid to it as a great and important branch 

 of rural economy. While many of the earliest printed books upon 

 miscellaneous subjects refer to topics concerning the growth and 

 planting of trees, &c, one of the first volumes wholly dedicated to 

 the treatment of vegetable economy in its different departments is 

 an old folio, written by an apothecary of London, one John Par- 

 kinson, who, in 1629, published his " Paradisi in Sole Paradlsus 

 Terrestris," which professed to be "A garden of all sorts of pleasant 

 Mowers which our English ayre will permit to be noursed up, with 

 a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, and fruites for meate 

 or sause used with us, and an orchard of all sortes of fruit-bearing 

 trees and shrubes fit for our land, together with the right ordering, 

 planting, and preserving of them, and their uses and vertues." 



In this early botanical work are given full and accurate descrip- 

 tions of all the various plants mentioned, with their modes of growth, 

 uses, and treatment ; and the volume is full of quaint, but very 

 accurate, woodcuts of many of the things described, illustrating the 

 roots, foliage, flowers, &c. The volume is, however, more horticul- 

 tural than arhoricultural, properly speaking. In 1664 was published 

 what may be styled the first standard printed work upon arboricul- 

 ture. Evelyn's Sylva* is so well-known at the present day, and is 

 still so widely read and admired, that anything like an attempt to 

 describe it in detail, its principles or arguments, seems quite super- 

 fluous. The work of a man, an enthusiast in tree-culture, it has 

 survived the wreck of similar works through centuries, and is still 

 an ornament and authority in the libraries of all interested in trees. 

 Like the works of the classical authors, Horace, Virgil, Ctesar, or 

 Livy, Evelyn is turned to in many a quiet country home at the 

 present day, not only to beguile the passing hour, but for improve- 

 ment and instruction. The earliest edition of this popular book 

 was, we have said, published in 1664; and there have been repeated 

 and frequent republications of it. It was the first book printed by 

 order of the Royal Society, the Sylva having appeared in 1664, while 

 the Terra was not issued till 1675. The fifth edition, in 2 vols, 

 quarto, with plates, was published so recently as 1825, edited with 

 notes by Dr A. Hunter; and in this learned and accurate edition, 



* Evelyn, John — " Sylva and Terra," or " Sylva, Pomona," also " Kalenda- 

 rium Hortense." London, 1664, folio. 



