PRODUCED BY MAN. 777 



of such clianges as those which the embankment of our rivers has 

 effected, referring those of my hearers who may feel an interest 

 in this particular change to Sir Christopher Wren's disquisition 

 upon the subject, which may be found with very much else very 

 well worth reading in the * Parentalia,' p. 1185. But I have to say 

 that changes of proportionately equal magnitude have been effected 

 in our landscape by the interposition of man in the way of intro- 

 ducing into it trees which, though now naturalised, are demonstrably 

 not indigenous to our soil. The most striking of these changes 

 are those which have been eflPected by the introduction of the 

 common elm, TJlmus campestris ; next, if indeed not equal in magni- 

 tude, those effected by the introduction of certain coniferse ; and 

 then, at a long distance behind as regards numerical importance, 

 those effected by the introduction of the horse-chestnut and the 

 sycamore. I do not of course forget that such trees as the walnut, 

 and a host of other trees which are now entering into the picturesque, 

 if not into the economical aspect of Great Britain, are as foreign to 

 our soil as their names remind us they are ; but I am not delivering 

 a treatise upon our forest trees, and I shall confine myself within 

 the limits which the three or four trees or orders of trees specified 

 in the preceding sentence mark out for me. Let me begin with 

 the simpler cases, those of the horse-chestnut and the sycamore first. 

 I should indeed be ungrateful, living as I do within such easy 

 sight of the beautiful, if not unrivalled, horse-chestnuts of New 

 College Gardens, if I did not express my sense of gratitude to the 

 men who introduced that tree into England. There is, of course, 

 as little question as to its non-indigenousness as there can be as 

 to its beauty. Botanists, however, differ as widely as possible as to 

 what its native land may have been. I have not been able to 

 satisfy myself that Hehn, 1. c, pp. 348 and 457, is right in saying 

 that we owe the introduction of this tree into Europe to the Turks. 

 All but certainly this was not the case if D. Hawkins, as cited by 

 Fiedler in ' Reise durch alle Theile des Konigreiches Griechenlands,' 

 1840, vol. i. p. 649, is right in saying that this tree grows wild 

 on Pindus and Pelion. There are not wanting species on either 



manigfaltig gegliederten Gebirgeketten, welche die Lander am Mittelmeere erfiillen, 

 aus dem Innern ihrer Felsmassen unerschopfliche und durch das fliessende Waeser 

 stetig ausgebreitete Vorrathe, um die Erdkrumen der Thalen und Tiefebenen immer 

 wieder auf Neue zu befruchten,' 



