56 



bringing- them to perfection. Accordingly, the practice of 

 removing them of a large size, instead of being, as is gene- 

 rally supposed, a modern invention, lays claim to the honours 

 of a high antiquity. When the Greeks or Romans wanted 

 to designate any thing that was impossible, or at least ex- 

 tremely difficult to be performed, they said, that it was like 

 " transplanting an old tree ;" and their usual way of apply- 

 ing the adage clearly sjiows, that their experience of the 

 success of the operation was not greatly different from our 

 own, at this moment.* 



In presenting to the reader a cursory view of the progress 

 of the practice, from the earliest times down to the present, 

 it is plain, that we are too little acquainted with the state of 

 arts and manners in ancient times, to be able to draw very 

 copiously from what has been called the classical ages. The 

 Greeks certainly were unacquainted with the painting of 

 landscape, notwithstanding the surprising height to which 

 they carried other departments of the art, and consequently 

 with the picturesque effect of trees. At Rome landscape 

 painting was first practised, only in the time of Augustus ;t 

 and, indeed, it does not seem to have been cultivated in any 

 striking degree, by this extraordinary people, at least, if we 

 may judge from the specimens found at Herculaneum and 

 Pompeii, at a later period of the empire. The ancients, 

 although they sufficiently understood and cultivated wood, 

 applied it much more to useful, than to ornamental purposes. 



The transplanting of trees of a large size appears to have 

 been of considerable importance to the Roman husbandman. 

 Pliny, who wrote during the reigns of Augustus and Tibe- 

 rius, speaks of elms twenty feet high, in the neighbourhood 

 of Rome, being commonly removed into the vineyard, for 

 the training of vines. They were planted, he says, in a 

 trench called Novenariiis ; because they stood in it, nine feet 



* Note II. t Note III. 



