852 



ing their position with unquestioned natives, may reasonably enter- 

 tain distrust of their aboriginally. As regards the chestnut, I cannot 

 actually prove its spontaneous dissemination in our woods by natural 

 means, although disposed to admit the fact from certain appearances 

 which favour the conclusion ; my objections to receive it as a native 

 tree are founded, however, upon other considerations, of which the 

 principal is its geographical distribution. From careful comparison 

 of the accounts given by botanical investigators in both hemispheres, 

 I come to the conclusion that the chestnut ceases to grow wild in 

 Asia, Europe and America on or about the 44th degree of latitude, al- 

 though in Europe at least it may be carried much further north by 

 cultivation, and may even continue to propagate itself spontaneously 

 in favourable situations in France, Switzerland, Germany and Eng- 

 land. It has indeed been doubted whether the chestnut be aboriginal 

 to any part of western Europe, even the most southerly, because its 

 name in all European languages comes from one root, and intimates 

 its alleged dispersion over our continent from Castanea, a city of 

 Thessaly.* Without entering on the discussion of the truth of such 



* Many of the plants in common cultivation in the south of Europe for use or 

 ornament, as the Vine, the Fig, the Olive and the Judas-tree, have been supposed of 

 Asiatic origin, and to have been introduced into our quarter of the globe as civiliza- 

 tion advanced westward. Having myself seen all these plants in places where they 

 had a perfectly native aspect, I am grown very sceptical on this point, and believe 

 that Vitis vinifera, Olea europsea, and Cercis Siliquastrum are the truly indigenous 

 representatives in Europe of their corresponding genera in the New World, where un- 

 der similar latitudes or nearly so Cercis Siliquastrum is replaced by C. canadensis, 

 Olea europam by O. caroliniana, and Vitis vinifera by V. Labrusea and its congeners, 

 it often happening that a genus of which there exists but a solitary European species 

 has two or more American representatives under the same parallel of latitude in both 

 hemispheres. The great similarity of type in the vegetation of Europe and America 

 strongly favours this idea of community of genera and even of species, so that as re- 

 gards the chestnut, since it is an acknowledged native of the Old World, its absence 

 from the flora of Europe up to the parallel it attains in the New would rather be a 

 matter of surprise, considering how extremely common it is in the latter, and that the 

 species differs little or nothing as it presents itself in either hemisphere. Lindley has 

 indeed gone so far as to rob the " littora myrtetis laetissima " of Italy of their chiefest 

 glory, for he tells us in his ' Vegetable Kingdom' (second edition, p. 736) " Myrtus 

 communis, the most northern species of the order (Myrtacea), is a native of (Persia, 

 but has become naturalized in) the south of Europe." I am not aware from what 

 source the Doctor got this information : the introduction of the myrtle into our quar- 

 ter of the world from Asia must have been from tbe remotest antiquity, which in 

 itself would be a reasonable cause for doubting the fact, did not the vast profusion 

 and wide dispersion of the myrtle over every part of the Mediterranean shores and 

 much of the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal pretty plainly refute that tradition. 



