Bibliographical Notices. 71 
complexity, of vital power, of instinct, and of intelligence, and all 
pointing to one Creative System, by whatever form of words we may 
try to define it. 
Essay on the Trees and Shrubs of the Ancients ; being the substance 
of four Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford. By 
C. Dauseny, M.D., Professor of Botany and Rural Economy. 
Oxford, 1865. 
The subject to which these lectures were devoted has long excited 
the curiosity of botanists, from its historical interest and also from 
its difficulty. The unscientific reader of the classical authors has 
probably no idea that the identification of the plants there named 
with those of our own or other northern countries is, to say the least, 
uncertain and unsatisfactory. 
The fruit-trees have perhaps been determined with tolerable cor- 
rectness, and their names properly translated by the ordinary lexico- 
graphers; for they are mostly (as we learn from Pliny) introduced 
plants even in Italy: the Peach from Persia, the Quince from Crete, 
the Damson from Damascus, and so on. Even the Cherry is stated 
by him to have come from Pontus. In most of these cases, doubt- 
less he was correct; aud perhaps even the cultivated Cherry may 
have been introduced, just as the cultivated Hop is in England, the 
wild Cherry and the wild Hop having in both cases escaped the un- 
observant people of the periods recorded for their introduction into 
the respective countries. 
Dr. Daubeny seems to think that the only fruits indigenous to 
Italy were the Mulberry, Apple, Pear, Plum, and Sorb. 
It is even more difficult properly to apply the classical names to the 
forest-trees than to the fruit-trees. Let us take the Fagus or Beech as 
anexample. Itis stated by Caesar not to inhabit Britain ; and, indeed, 
Dr. Daubeny seems to consider it to have been introduced to our 
country not earlier than the Norman conquest; but surely he must 
have forgotten the extensive woods formed of this tree which now or 
recently existed in the chalky parts of the country. It is quite 
likely that Caesar did not see the Beech in Britain, for he does not 
seem to have penetrated to the districts wooded by it; and there is 
also the confusion between the @yyés of Theophrastus and Fagus of 
Pliny to be remembered. ‘The former may have been the Quercus 
esculus; the latter correspond with the df of Theophrastus. 
The following extract will show the elaborate and exhaustive 
manner in which these curious questions are treated in the present 
book. On the tribe of Firs stated by Pliny to be pitch-bearing 
Dr. Daubeny says :— 
“These Pliny divides into 4dies and Pinus: and modern botanists, 
having separated the Adbietine into two groups—namely, the one with 
leaves solitary or in two ranks, the other in clusters of two, three, or 
five each—place the former under the head of Adies, and the latter 
under that of Pinus. 
