16 HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART I. 



Trees are mentioned in the writings of Hesiod and Homer. 

 The garden of Alcinous is said to have contained various sorts 

 of fruit trees : and directions are given in Hesiod for lopping the 

 poplar, and other species, for fuel; and felling the oak, the elm, 

 and other kinds of large trees, for timber. 



The principal trees of the Egyptians^ according to Herodotus, 

 were, the palm, the sycamore fig, the lote tree (Celtis australis, 

 according to Mr. Hogg, Gard. Mag., x. 291.), the olive, and 

 the pomegranate. There are, we know, several other trees which 

 are natives of Egypt ; but these were probably thought most 

 worthy of being recorded, as producing edible fruit. 



The gardens of the Persians contained trees ; and those in 

 the garden of the younger Cyrus, at Sardis s were all planted with 

 his own hand, in straight lines : the only mode which, at that 

 early period, when scarcely any but indigenous trees were in use 

 by planters, could convey the expression of art and design. In 

 general, the trees which most attracted the attention of the 

 ancients were those which bore edible fruits, produced spices, 

 had a terebinthine odour, or possessed spreading branches to 

 afford shade. Hence the frequent mention of the palm, the fig, 

 the olive, the cinnamon, the camphor, the cypress, the sycamore 

 fig, and the plane. 



The only positive source of information respecting the trees 

 known to the nations of antiquity, down to the time of the Greeks, 

 is to be found in the works of Theophrastus. Stackhouse, in his 

 edition of Theophrastus's Historia Plantarum, has endeavoured 

 to show the modern botanical names for the plants of which 

 Theophrastus has treated. Sprengel had done the same thing 

 in his Historia Rei Herbaria. Stackhouse has added to his 

 own indentifications as many of those of Sprengel as are dif- 

 ferent from, and supplementary to, his own. From both we 

 have selected the following list of the ligneous species. Stack- 

 house has stated in the preface to his second volume (his work 

 is in two volumes, 1813, 1814), that Sprengel has carefully 

 ascertained 357 of the kinds treated of by Theophrastus, and 

 that he has passed over the rest, which are nearly as many in 

 number, in silence; except remarking the circumstances which 

 make them so ambiguous as to render the identifying of them 

 hopeless. To some of the identifications which have been 

 proposed, doubt appertains; and, in the case of the ligneous 

 species, in the enumeration below, this doubt is expressed by 

 notes of interrogation. It may be observed, that the greater 

 number of these plants, according to Sibthorp's Flora Grtcca, 

 are natives of Greece, and that most of those which are not, 

 will endure the open air, or are cultivated, in that country. The 

 whole of them, with scarcely any exceptions, are in British 

 gardens and hot-houses ; and all those which we have marked 



