ISfi HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART I. 



forms a thin volume folio, and appeared in 1730. These are the only 

 works of note, which appeared on the subject of trees exclusively, previously 

 to the time of Linna;us. 



Witli the exception of nurserymen's catalogues, and some works on plant- 

 ing and maniiging trees and plantations generally, nothing exclusively devoted 

 to the suhject of trees appeared in Britain, till llanbury ijublisiied his Eissai/ 

 on l'ltnttin<i m 1758: a ponderous folio never in much esteem, and of very 

 little interest. Indeed, the only gardening book in England in which trees 

 and shrubs were described, and treated of botanically as well as horticul- 

 turally, previously to the commencement of the nineteenth century, was the 

 Dictionan/ of Miller. The Earl of Haddington, in Scotland, published a Trca- 

 tisc on Forest Trees, in ]2mo, in 17G(»; but it can only beconsitlered as a work 

 descriptive of trees and shrubs generally. In 1771, Mcader, gardener to the 

 Duke of Northumberland at Syon House, published the Planter^ Guide, 

 which is little more than a list of trees, with an imaginary engraving siiowing 

 their com[)arative heights. A similar list is given at the end of the second 

 volume of Morel's Thcoric des Jardin.i, the second edition of which appeared 

 in 1802. In 1772, W. Butcher, a nurseryman at Edinburgh, published a 

 Treatise on Forest Trees, already mentioned as a valuable work for the time at 

 which it appeared; and, in 1777, Dr. Anderson, under the name of Agricola, 

 published Various Thoughts on Plantiu<i and Training Timber Trees. Planting 

 and Rural 0/-««h(c«/ was published by William Marshall in 179G, in 2 vols.Svo, 

 one of which is devoted to the description of trees and shrubs, chiefly, as the 

 author acknowledges, taken from Hanbury and Miller. In 1779, Walter 

 Nicol published the Praetical Planter, and subsequently the Planter's Calen- 

 dar, vm cditionof which, edited, or rather, rewritten by Mr. Sang, and published 

 in 1812, in 1 vol. 8vo, is the last and the best work on trees and shrubs which 

 has appeared in Scotland. 



With the first year of the nineteenth century appeared the Planter and Forest- 

 Pruner of William Pontey ; but this and the other works on planting of that 

 author belong to the general subject of culture, rather than to the description 

 and history of trees and shrubs. In 1803, Lambert's Monograph of the genus 

 Pinus appeared in one volume folio, price twenty guineas ; a second volume 

 has since been added ; and, in conformity with the s[)irit of the times, an edition 

 has been published in two volumes 8vo, price 12/. 12.s. In 1811, Dr. Wade 

 of Dublin produced a descriptive work on theVillow, entitled AW/Vrt, in one 

 volume 8vo ; and, in 1823, Mr. Henry Philips produced, in two volumes 8vo, 

 Si/lva Florifera, in which the more common ornamental trees and shrubs are 

 treated of in a popular and agreeable manner. Passing over the Woodlands of 

 Cobbctt, which appeared in 182(), in one volume Kvo, we come to the most 

 scientific work exclusively devotcil to trees which has hitherto been ])ublished 

 in England, the Dendrologia Britanniea of P. W. Watson, which was com[)leted 

 in two volumes 8vo, in 1825. The first volume contains 80 plates, and the 

 second 90 i)lates. The letterpress, with the exception of 72 pages of intro- 

 ductory matter, consists solely of technical descriptions of the figures, arranged 

 in a tabular form under a given number of heads ; a very etiectual mode of 

 preventing any point, necessary to be attended to in the description of a plant, 

 from escaping the notice of the describer. In this respect, the work is sujierior 

 to some of its contemporaries, in which the descriptions are sometimes rather 

 disorderlv if complete; and are often incomplete, ai)[)arently from want of being 

 taken in some fixed and comprehensive t)rder. JNIr. Watson was a tradesman 

 in Hull, who afterwards retired from business; and he was one of the principal 

 persons who assisted in founding, and afterwards in laying out and managing, 

 the Hull Botanic (harden, as stated in the introtluction to his Dendrologia, 

 p. xii. He died, we believe, in 1827. The only work hitherto publishetl in 

 iMiuland, which contains a descri|)tion of all the hardy trees and shrubs in the 

 cotmtrv, in addition to tiiat of all other plants, ligneous and herbaceous, 

 described by Eurojjean botanists, is Don's edition of Sliller's Dictionary/, in four 

 voluiuca 4to, price 14/. . 



