HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART I. 



SUB.SECT. 4?. Of the Foreign Trees and Shrubs introduced into Britain 

 in the 18th Century. 



A HOST of amateurs, botanists, and commercial gardeners 

 enriched the British arboretum during this century. In the 

 preceding one, the taste for foreign plants was confined to a few, 

 and these not the richest persons in the community; but generally 

 medical men, clergymen, persons holding small situations under 

 government, or tradesmen. In the 18th century, the taste for 

 planting foreign trees extended itself among the wealthy landed 

 proprietors ; partly from the influence of the Princess Dowager 

 of Wales, who established the arboretum at Kew, and partly 

 from the display previously made by Archibald Duke of Argyle 

 at Whitton, the Duke of Richmond at Goodwood, and others. 

 Towards the middle of the century, the change introduced in 

 the taste for laying out grounds, by Pope, Addison, and Kent ; 

 and the circumstance that Brown, who had been a practical 

 gardener, was extensively employed in remodelling country resi- 

 dences according to this new taste, must have greatly contributed 

 to increase the number of species employed in plantations; and 

 hence we have the collections at Croome, at Syon, and at Clare- 

 mont. The writings of Miller, Bradley, Switzer, and Linnaeus, 

 and the consequent spread of botanical knowledge among the 

 educated classes about the middle of the century or before, must 

 have enlightened practical men to a degree far exceeding that 

 which had ever previously existed. 



In order to give a general view of the state of gardening in 

 England in the first half of the 18th century, as far as it respects 

 foreign trees, we shall begin by giving a summary notice, by 

 Collinson, of the chief encouragers of gardening and planting of 

 his time. Peter Collinson was born in London, in 1693 : he was 

 a quaker, and a linendraper. He had a country house and 

 garden, first at Peckham in Surrey, and afterwards at Mill 

 Hill, near Hendon in Middlesex. He appears to have taken 

 possession of the latter place, liidgeway House, sometime pre- 

 vious to 1749. He was a great lover of animated nature in every 

 form,'; and in one of his letters, published by Sir James Edward 

 Smith, in the Linncean Correspondence, he declares that every 

 living thing called forth his affections. In a note written in 

 1768, in one of his copies of Miller's Dictionary, which was 

 purchased from one of his lineal descendants in January 1835, 

 by A. B. Lambert, Esq., and which, through the kindness of that 

 gentleman, we have just seen, he declares, at the age of 68, that 

 the plants in his garden at Mill Hill furnish his greatest source 

 of happiness. He died in 1768. In the year 1764-, he made 

 notes on some blank leaves in a copy of Miller's Dictionary, and 



