PROFITABLE TIMBER TREES 57 



indigenous to these islands. The remainder are introductions 

 from Europe or various parts of the world which enjoy a 

 temperate or sub-Arctic climate. Since the sixteenth century 

 our list of introduced trees has - been steadily increasing in 

 length, until to-day it numbers something like two hundred 

 species, which are practically capable of growing to a fair size 

 in our climate. Our strictly indigenous forest trees are the 

 oak (sessile and pedunculate), ash, birch, wych elm, gean or 

 cherry, alder, willow, aspen, abele, and Scots fir. All these 

 may be considered as genuine natives, while beech and horn- 

 beam might be added as trees which are negatively indigen- 

 ous, in so far as no record exists of their having been 

 introduced, while, on the other hand, their distribution as 

 constituents of primeval forest is too limited .to place them in 

 the list of undoubted natives. The Romans are supposed to 

 have introduced the English elm, lime, sweet chestnut, plum, 

 and walnut ; but this is conjecture only, and it is possible that 

 the scanty references in which this conjecture originated may 

 have been based on personal and incomplete knowledge. 

 That the English elm was introduced by them is very 

 probable, however, for it is most abundant to-day in those 

 districts in which the Romans had their chief settlements. 

 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw most of our 

 European forest trees, such as the spruce, silver fir, larch, etc., 

 introduced as garden specimens, while the cedar of Lebanon 

 appears also to have been brought in about this period. 



Parkinson, in " A Corallarie " to " The Orchard," a section 

 of his work published under the title of Paridisi in Sole 

 Paridisus Terrestris in 1629, mentions the larch "nursed up 

 but with a few." " Not believed to bear cones in England," 

 and a pine " which is planted in many places of our land 

 for ornament and shelter." " Great straight bodies covered 

 with a greyish-green bark, the younger branches are set 

 round about with very long whitish-green leaves." This was 

 probably the stone pine. He also mentions the spruce 

 (" grown with us to be more frequent of late days for the 

 building of houses than ever before"), the linden, and the 

 great maple or sycamore. 



Evelyn mentions the spruce, silver fir, pinaster, larch, 

 cedar of Lebanon, and a species which was probably the 



