PREFATORY vii 



The pursuit of every study must have a beginning, 

 and every wandering quest its inspiration. 



If this rudimentary effort should perchance 

 implant a love anywhere of Tree Study, depend 

 upon it the victim of the craze will not rest until 

 he has acquired and ransacked the great works of 

 past masters of the art. But be it remembered, 

 a Greek scholar does not commence his studies 

 with Plato. 



Again, any apology is discounted by the fact that 

 all distinguished and exhaustive writers upon such 

 subjects, and cognate subjects, go back to the inves- 

 tigation of their predecessors in the shades. They 

 work on the land prepared, and add a little to its 

 fertility each time they plunge their spade. Our 

 object is far more lowly; it is to make the well- 

 turned soil more friable, a little more easy to work. 



Loudon wrote exhaustively up to date, but his date 

 became out of date, and some of the works of to-day, 

 complete and exhaustive as they are, will become 

 out of date in their turn, and have to be written up 

 to time. Chinese plants introduced by Wilson and 

 Forrest will have grown up and awakened new in- 

 terests. Further observations will have been made of 

 them, and they will call forth a new writer to portray 

 them, to sing their merits, or sound their requiem. 



The great writers of to-day will in their turn 

 become the predecessors in the shades, and new 

 scribes will arise to carry still farther forward the 

 mighty tasks of investigation they so ably in their 

 day chronicled. There's a running truth in the 

 lines of Rudyard Kipling, which underlies the action 

 of many authorities of many 'ologies : 



It all comes out of the books I read. 

 It all goes into the books I write, 



I am one who unhesitatingly and unrepentantly pleads 

 guilty to this indictment. 



