780 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



where the Welshman — in spite of the traditional hatred for trees 

 which his race, like some other ancient races, as, for example, the 

 Spanish, is said to entertain — has allowed the ancient flora to 

 remain, and left it unmixed with foreign importations. The inter- 

 vention of the glacial period will easily account for the wiping out 

 of the spruce from the list of post-glacially indigenous British 

 trees ; but it is not so easy to explain how it has been that the 

 silver fir (Abies peclinata), which is found in the Scottish peat, was 

 absent from at least historic Britain till the year 1603 ; and that 

 the Finns mu^/ms, the Taeda of the Romans, should be found in the 

 peat-bogs of Ireland, and should subsequently have become as 

 thoroughly extinct there as the Irish elk, Cervus megaceros. On 

 the other hand, it is not difiicult to understand how it has been 

 that the Scotch fir, with characteristic pertinacity and hardiness, 

 followed up the retreating glacial forces more closely than even the 

 ' Norway ' spruce ; for at this day it propagates itself, either by 

 self-sown or by squirrel-sown seeds, much more surely and widely 

 than does this equally or more than equally hardy tree. 



1 must not leave the subject of the Scotch fir without rectifying 

 an error relating to it which various writers^, from the time of 

 Caesar's Greek translator down to those of Evelyn and of myself 

 inclusively, have fallen into when writing about it. Julius Caesar, 

 in an often-quoted and as often mistranslated passage 2, says of 

 Britain, ' Materia cujusque generis, ut in Gallia, est praeter fagum 

 atque abietem ; ' and these words are ordinarily taken to mean, 

 ^ There is wood of all kinds to be found in Britain, as in Gaul, 

 excejot the beech and the fir.' Poor old Planudes of course blundered, 



* Planudes fl. 1327 a.d. See p. 46 of Appendix to Cambridge edition of Caesar's 

 Works, 1706. 



Evelyn, ' Silva, a Discourse of Forest Trees delivered in the Eoyal Society, Oct. 19, 

 1662.' Ed. Hunter, 1776, p. 139. 



Hasted, 'Phil. Trans.,' vol. Ixi., for year 1771, pt. 2, 1772, p. 166. 



De Candolle, 'G^ogr. Botanique,' pp. 154, 689. 1855. 



Johns, 'Forest Trees of Great Britain,' p. 42. 



Eolleston in 'British Barrows,' pp. 722-724. To do myself justice, I did not err 

 so widely as my companions in this matter. I was as ignorant of Latin as they ; but 

 I accused Julius of only one blunder, while they accused him of two. If I had 

 really believed that * Caesar doth not wrong but with good cause ' it would have been 

 better for me. As it was I made a poorish * explanation ' for Julius as regarded the 

 abies, but confessed that I felt some doubt as to the accuracy of his statement as to 

 the beech. See Article XVII, pp. 325-6. 



2 DeBelloGallico, V. 12. 



