APPENDIX. 721 



numbered and the cliaracter of its summer and indeed winter 

 clothing" of leaves so entirely chang-ed by foreig-n immigrations, as 

 Victor Helm in his interesting* work, ' Kulturpflanzen und Haus- 

 thiere,' 1870, pp. 2, 314, 392, is inclined to think that of Italy has 

 been, the changes which the woodlands of this country have under- 

 gone since prehistoric times have been very great indeed. 



Much weight must in the first place be laid upon the enormously 

 greater proportion of the entire surface of the country which was 

 in early times occupied by trees^ though England is even at the 

 present day one of the best wooded of civilised countries ; for the 

 influence of this quantitative difference upon both man and beast 

 must have been important and many-sided to a degree which, in spite 

 of all that has been wa-itten by others, it is difficult to exaggerate. 

 Qualitatively the character of the trees which filled the plains, 

 clothed the hillside, and formed the sky-line of the neolithic period 

 was a very different one from that of those which stand at intervals 

 in our hedges and enclosures and bound our horizon, at least in our 

 midland and southern counties. Some difference of opinion exists 

 among botanists as to whether the ' common ' elm, which is now 

 perhaps the most abundant of our southern and midland trees, is or 

 is not indigenous ^. I cannot but think that the facts of its absence 

 from parts of Great Britain which are separated either by moorland 

 or mountain from the southern and midland counties, whilst it 

 flourishes in such districts when once introduced into them, coupled 



^ For the changes which have heen produced in ovir indigenous flora hy the successive 

 immigi-ants into or conquerors of this country, see De CandoUe's Geographic Botanique 

 Eaisonne'e, 1855, vol. ii. pp. 645-705 ; the Eev. C. A. Johns, Forest Trees of Great 

 Britain, who says (p. 42), ' If in my history of forest trees I were to confine myself to 

 those which are universally acknowledged to be indigenous to Britain, I should soon 

 bring my labours to a close. England, though once a well-wooded coiintry, never pro- 

 bably could boast of containing within it any great variety of species ; ' and Pearson, 

 * Historical Maps of England,' 1869, pp. 48, 49. 



For the question as to the indigenous character of the common elm, see De Candolle, 

 /. c, p. 690, and Watson and Bromfield, cifi. in loco ; Pratt, Flowering Plants and 

 Ferns of Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 98 ; Johns, 1. c, p. 227. The history of the common 

 elm, which, though miiltitudinous and prominent in our landscapes, has yet failed, as 

 its rarely seeding shows, to become really naturalised in our soil, may be taken as 

 corresponding, and curiously, if it be really a Eoman importation, to that of the Latin 

 element in o\\r language, which, though outnumbering by mere words the Teutonic or 

 Saxon element in the proportion of 29,354 to 13,330 (Thommerel, cit. Ma.\^ Miiller, 

 Lectures on the Science of Language, 1861, p. 74), has never established itself in our 

 grammar. The wych-elm, which in spite of its more rajjid growth and greater beauty 

 has nevertheless, owing probably to the lesser durability of its timber, had its area of 

 distribution in Great Britain curtailed by successive invaders, may in like manner be 

 considered to tyjiify the histoi-y of the indigenous British races as encroached upon by 

 Teutonic and Scandina\'ian conquerors. 



3 A 



