INTRODUCTION. 1 1 



even less frequently. In the First Book of Kings it is 

 stated that Elijah "lay and slept under a Juniper tree in 

 the wilderness." This tree is also incidentally mentioned 

 in the Books of Job and Psalms, but we believe, with these 

 exceptions, in no other instance throughout the Scriptures. 

 The Yew is not alluded to by any of the sacred writers. 



According to London, " the first author who wrote ex- 

 clusively on trees and shrubs appears to have been Belon, 

 a Doctor of Medicine of the faculty of Paris, who pro- 

 duced a small quarto volume, entitled : De Arboribus, 

 Coniferis, liesiniferis, etc., printed in Paris in 1523, and 

 illustrated with a number of engravings on wood. Dif- 



Vj ^J 



ferent species of Juniperus and Citpressus, the Thuja 

 Orientalis, Cedrus Libani, and several pines and firs, as 

 well as the Larch, are described and figured ; and a num- 

 ber of other plants are mentioned incidentally." Since 

 Belon's time, however, the French have paid the Coni- 

 fers marked attention ; more, perhaps, than any other 

 nation. 



London also says : " In Delamarre's Traite Pratique de 

 la Culture des Pins, 3rd Edition, published in 1834, will 

 be found an alphabetical catalogue of forty-three authors, 

 who have written more or less on the culture of the Pine 

 in France." 



Among the many writers on Conifers, the same author- 

 ity states that Tournefort was the first to study them scien- 

 tifically, and to class the order into genera, as described 

 in his Institutiones, published in 1717 and 1719. He was 

 followed by LinnaBtis in his Genera Plantarum, published 

 1737; by Adanson, in his families des Plantes, published 

 1763 ; and by Jussieu, in 1789, in his Genera Plantarum. 

 These writers were succeeded by Solander, in 1786 ; by 

 Gartner, in 1791 ; by Lambert, in his first volume entitled 

 Monograph of the Genus Pltius, published in 1803 ; 

 which was followed by his second volume in 1832, and the 

 third in 1837. Other botanical authors have, during the 



