^4-8 Strutfs Si/lva Britdfinicd. 



4 



rk ; the Creeping Oak in Savernake Forest, of which a 

 portrait is given in the Delicice Sylvdrum ; the Gospel Oak 

 near Stoneleigh ; the Great Beech in Windsor Forest, and 

 the Burnhani Beeches, both also figured in the same work ; 

 the Fallen Chestnut at Cobham Park ; the Great Cedar at 

 Hammersmith House ; and the old Cedars in Chelsea Gar- 

 den. In the present edition, as the entire work has been 

 brought out at once, and submitted to the public in the form 

 of a complete volume, some alteration has been adopted in 

 the arrangement of the subjects, by placing all the specimens 

 of each species of tree in juxtaposition. This certainly is an 

 improvement ; as it throws an air of regularity around the 

 book, and gives it a more methodical and systematic charac- 

 ter. It should be mentioned, too, that no inconsiderable 

 additions have been made to the letter-press, or descriptive 

 portions of the work. 



Such, then, are among the particulars in which the two 

 editions differ from each other. But, as regards the plates, a 

 more important point of discrepance remains to be noticed : 

 we do not allude to their inferiority in size, to their compara- 

 tive merits, nor to the circumstance of the prints in the new 

 edition being (unlike those of the former one) in the style of 

 sketches or vignettes, but to the peculiar kind of engraving of 

 which they consist. On this subject considerable difference 

 of opinion has been found to exist even among those who are 

 not unskilled in the arts. By most persons, we believe, they 

 are taken for etchings executed on copper or on steel plates ; 

 and some few of them at least we have heard pronounced 

 by others to have been cut on wood. The fact is, they have 

 neither been cut on wood, nor etched on copper nor on steel, 

 but — on stone ! They are pure lithography, and nothing 

 else ! Such of our readers as have inspected the plates in 

 question may, perhaps, be a little startled at this assertion, as 

 we certainly should have been ourselves had we heard it made 

 without knowing, as we do, the fact to be as already stated. 

 We are free to confess, that hitherto we have for the most 

 part entertained rather a mean opinion of lithographic prints, 

 and have been accustomed to refer them to the very fag end 

 of the fine arts. The practitioners in this craft we have been 

 in the habit of hearing sometimes called in contempt by the 

 opprobrious appellation of " stone-masons," and have our- 

 selves been almost ready to join in the general outcry 

 against them. In truth, the superior quickness and facility 

 with which lithographic prints are executed, as compared 

 with those engraved on metal or on wood, and the far more 

 agreeable kind of work which is alone requisite to produce 



