INTRODUCTION. 



AMONG all the varied productions with which Nature 

 has adorned the surface of the earth, none awakens our 

 sympathies, or interests our imagination, so powerfully as 

 those venerable trees which seem to have stood the lapse of 

 ages silent witnesses of the successive generations of man, 

 to whose destiny they bear so touching a resemblance, alike 

 in their budding, their prime, and their decay. 



Hence, iu all ages, the earliest dawn of civilization has 

 been marked by a reverence of woods and groves : devotion 

 has fled to their recesses for the performance of her most 

 solemn rites ; princes have chosen the embowering shade of 

 some wide-spreading tree, under which to receive the depu- 

 tations of the neighbouring " great ones of the earth;" and 

 angels themselves, it is recorded, have not disdained to deliver 

 their celestial messages beneath the same verdant canopy. 

 To sit under the shadow of his own fig-tree, and drink of the 

 fruit of his own vine, is the reward promised, in Holy Writ, 

 to the righteous man ; and the gratification arising from the 

 sight of a favourite and long-remembered tree, is one enjoyed 

 in common by the peer, whom it reminds, as its branches 



