ANCIENT FORESTS OF EUROPE. 17 



' In the Ionian Isles the clearance of wood has proceeded 

 more rapidly than in the Cyclades ; forests, from which 

 Mount Nero in the island of Cephalonia obtained its name, 

 disappeared after the establishment of the Venetians. 

 The northern part of Corfu, at the same time, remains 

 yet covered with abundant forests of planes, cedars, pines, 

 firs, beeches, and elms. Leucadia has beautiful oak-woods, 

 which supply Ithaca with the wood with which it is 

 actually unprovided. Zante, the ancient Zacynthus, which 

 Strabo describes as still very woody, is now completely 

 destitute of forests. 



*' Turkey presents in our days a state analogous to that 

 of ancient Greece ; the distribution of forest vegetation 

 does not appear to have changed much. The oak is the 

 kind which forms the basis of it ; the predominant species 

 are quercus robur, quercus cerris, quercus pubescens, quercus 

 pedunculata, aegilops, cylindrica, and apennina; to these 

 species are united, in Albania and at Epirus, as well as in 

 Thessaly, in maritime Macedonia, and upon Tekir-Dagh, 

 the quercus ilex, quercus aciculus, and quercus coccifera. 

 Servia and Bosnia possess the most beautiful forests ; in 

 this latter province firs, pines, and birches announce a 

 more northern vegetation ; these kinds are extended upon 

 the southern ridge. 



' Russia, which appears to be the last country of Europe 

 that has awoke to civilisation, exhibits still that forest 

 condition which was that of the rest of the world before 

 man had dispossessed the ground of its thick shades, to 

 open a free space for his agricultural labours. In this 

 vast empire forest lines of a prodigious extent run in 

 every direction ; in the south forests are little met with 

 except along the rivers, if we except the Black Forest, 

 an immense wood of oaks, which covers a superficies of 

 4000 versts. 



' Yet, in the Crimea, forest kinds become more abundant. 

 Forests stretch over the two slopes of the central range ; 



C 



