CHAPTER I. 



SITES OF WOODS PERPETUATED IN NAMES OF PLACES. 



WE find in many countries in the names of places a 

 reference to woods, and trees, and woodland scenery. We 

 meet with this in the European designation, Transylvania ; 

 we meet with it in names of places and reference to woods 

 preserved in the sacred books of the Hebrews indicative 

 that Palestine was of old a wooded country : while the 

 absence of such allusion in their later books the New 

 Testament Scriptures seems to indicate that two thou- 

 sand years ago the woods had disappeared ; we meet 

 with the same thing in the name of Madeira, the Portu- 

 guese word for wood, conferred in reference to the richly 

 wooded state of the island when colonised, and perpetuated, 

 notwithstanding the woods having been not long after that 

 devastated by fire ; and we meet with it in old geographi- 

 cal names and terminations of names, etymologic-ally indi- 

 cative of the places having been situated in woods or 

 groves, though it may be no woods or groves be existing 

 there now. Mr Marsh, in his volume entitled " The Earth 

 as Modified by Human Action," in referring to this, cites 

 the following as illustrative of the fact : <l In Southern 

 Europe, Breul, Broglio, Brolio, Brolo ; in Northern Europe, 

 Breuil, and the endings, -dean, -den, -don, -ham, -holt, 

 -herst, hurst, -hind, -shaw, -shot, -skog, -skov, -wald, 

 -weald, -wold, -wood." In England we have not a few of 

 such names, Chillingbam, Chislehurst, Sherwood, St 

 John's Wood, and many others. 



Besides these we have places named from different kinds 

 of trees, which it may be supposed gave to the localities a 



