82 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



would be far greater than almost any other kind of 

 planting. 



Proposed illustration of Temperate Forests. 



The plan I have now to propose is very different from 

 all these. It is one which would be perfectly novel, 

 perfectly practicable, intensely interesting as a great arbori- 

 cultural experiment, attractive alike to the uneducated 

 and to the scientific, not more expensive than any other 

 plan, and perfectly in harmony with the character of the 

 domain as essentially " a forest. " It is, briefly, to form 

 several distinct portions of forest, each composed solely of 

 trees and shrubs which are natives of one of the great 

 forest regions of the temperate zone. 



In order to understand how interesting and how instruc- 

 tive this would be, and, especially, to how great an extent 

 it would add to the variety and beauty of the scenery, 

 while retaining to the fullest extent its character as a wild 

 and picturesque woodland district, it will be necessary to 

 give a brief sketch of the great forests of the north 

 temperate zone, to point out their comparative richness, 

 their distinctive characters, and their different styles of 

 beauty : and in doing this I shall avail myself largely of the 

 writings of the greatest authority on the subject, the late 

 Professor Asa Gray, who has made the relations and origin 

 of the various forest regions of the Northern Hemisphere 

 the study of his life. 



The two northern continents, America on the one side, 

 Europe and Asia on the other, have each two great and 

 contrasted forest regions, an eastern and a western ; and 

 in both cases the eastern is very rich, while the western 

 is comparatively poor. The trees of our own country 

 belong to the western or European forest region, which 

 includes also the adjacent parts of Western Asia. That 

 region contains about eighty-five different kinds of trees 

 (seventeen being conifers, or firs and pines), and of these 

 only twenty-eight are really natives of Britain, about 

 twenty being tolerably common, and forming the wild trees 

 of our woods and wastes, with which we are all more or less 

 familiar. 



