782 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



side of,' even when by the aid of a negative, expressed or im- 

 plied, it comes to be more conveniently translated by the word 

 ' except.' 



It would be perhaps showing as much over-anxiety to vindicate 

 Caesar's accuracy, as has been shown of over-readiness to impute 

 inaccuracy to him, if I were to point out, after Parlatore^, that 

 Caesar might have been familiar with the Scotch fir itself, Pimis 

 sylvestris^ even in Italy, to say nothing of the other European 

 countries traversed by his victorious eagles. An historian who 

 was or was not a professed botanist, might without any sensible 

 man blaming him, speak now-a-days of all the common pines, 

 * Scotch,' ' umbrella,' ' cluster,' &c., as ^ pines"; my present belief is 

 that Julius would similarly have spoken of them all as alleles^ and 

 would probably have included the ' firs ' proper under the same 

 name as these ' pines.' But I wish hereby to retract the suggestion 

 1. c. as to his having meant the silver fir, Ahies pectinata, by the 

 word ahiesj in the much vexed passage in question ; though that 

 suggestion was made in the best possible spirit, and is scientifically 

 unanswerable as against those unhappy persons who feel male- 

 volently towards Caesar, which I never did, and are at the same 

 time, as I was when I made that suggestion, unable to translate 

 him correctly 2. 



I have yet a couple of points to mention regarding the use which 

 man has made of the Coniferae, and the alteration which he has 

 in comparatively recent times effected, firstly by, and secondly 

 upon, the distribution of this order of trees. 



The same number and the same article on Coniferous Trees in 

 the ' Edinburgh Review,' October, 1 864, gives the interesting his- 

 tory of the recovery by Br^montier and his followers, from the 

 condition of blown sand, of the vast area (100,000 acres) in the 

 Landes of Gascony, which should in justice to him bear his name. 



^ ']fctudes sur la G^ographie Botanique de I'ltalie,' p. 37, 1878. 



^ Mr. J. A. Froude cannot be accused of any want of loyalty to the subject of his 

 ' Biography ' ; still we may say to him 



Nee te tua plurima, Pentheu, 

 Labentem pietas, nee Apollinis infula texit — 

 for in that work, * Caesar, a Sketch/ 1879, 1 read, at p. 271, of Britain when invaded 

 B.C. 54, that ' the vegetation resembled that of France, save that he saw no beech and 

 no spruce pine,' Caesar must have seen the beech, but not even Caesar could have 

 looked either far enough forwards or far enough backwards to have seen the spruce fir 

 growing in Britain. 



