INTRODUCTION. 



uses of trees and shrubs, it may be sufficient to observe, that 

 there is hardly an art or a manufacture, in which timber, or 

 some other ligneous product, is not, in one way or other, em- 

 ployed to produce it. 



The use of trees in artificial plantations, in giving shelter or 

 shade to lands exposed to high winds or to a burning sun, and 

 in improving the climate and general appearance of whole tracts 

 of country ; in forming avenues to public or private roads, and 

 in ornamenting our parks and pleasure-grounds, is too well 

 known to require to be enlarged on here. 



Every one feels that trees are among the grandest and most 

 ornamental objects of natural scenery : what would landscapes 

 be without them ? Where would be the charm of hills, plains, 

 valleys, rocks, rivers, cascades, lakes, or islands, without the 

 hanging wood, the widely extended forest, the open grove, the 

 scattered groups, the varied clothing, the shade and intricacy, 

 the contrast, and the variety of form and colour, conferred by 

 trees and shrubs? A tree is a grand object in itself; its bold 

 perpendicular elevation, and its commanding attitude, render it 

 sublime ; and this expression is greatly heightened by our know- 

 ledge of its age, stability, and duration. The characteristic 

 beauties of the general forms of trees are as various as their 

 species ; and equally so are the beauty and variety of the rami- 

 fications of their branches, spray, buds, leaves, flowers, and 

 fruit. The changes in the colour of the foliage of trees, at 

 different seasons of the year, alone form a source of ever- vary ing 

 beauty, and of perpetual enjoyment to the lovers of nature. 

 What can be more interesting than to watch the developement 

 of the buds of trees in spring, or the daily changes which take 

 place in the colour of their foliage in autumn ? But to point 

 out here all the various and characteristic beauties of trees, would 

 be to anticipate what we shall have to say hereafter of the 

 different species and varieties enumerated in our Work. 



Shrubs, to many of the beauties of trees, frequently add those 

 of herbaceous plants; and produce flowers, unequalled both for 

 beauty and fragrance. What flower, for example, is compa- 

 rable in beauty of form and colour, in fragrance, and in inte- 

 resting associations, with the rose ? The flower of the honey- 

 suckle has been admired from the most remote antiquity, and 

 forms as frequent an ornament of classic, as the rose does of 

 Gothic, architecture. In British gardens, what could compensate 

 us, in winter, for the arbutus and the laurustinus, or even the 

 common laurel and the common ivy, as ornamental evergreens ; 

 for the flowers of the rhododendron, azalea, kalmia, and 

 mezereon, in spring; or for the fruit of the gooseberry, currant, 

 and raspberry, in summer? And what hedge plant, either in 

 Europe or America, equals the common hawthorn ? In short, 



