58 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



ages must the slow changes have progressed 

 that brought into existence all the varieties of 

 trees now existing ! It does not come within 

 our scope to search the geological record. 

 We must take it as read. Perhaps we know 

 enough of it already for the imagination to be 

 stirred. Those among us who are proudest 

 of their lineage might envy the trees their 

 ancestry. Have we not seen that our fore- 

 fathers believed that men were descendants of 

 the trees ? In one sense they thought more 

 truly than they knew. We may well walk 

 reverently among the trees. Their life has 

 been handed down to them from the days 

 when there was no human eye to watch their 

 growth, no human ear to listen to the rustling 

 of their leaves in the wind. 



This book is not a treatise. We are not 

 concerned to draw up a list even of British 

 trees alone, and formally to state their charac- 

 teristics. No help is offered here to the tree- 

 grower. We may take note of the use to 

 which the wood of various trees can be put, 

 though this is not essential to our main pur- 

 pose. The tree has ceased to be a tree by 

 the time it has become useful as timber. It 



