COMMON, OR EUROPEAN LIME-TREE. 5 



and public walks both in France and England, as we learn 

 from Du Hamel, who observes, " The French, growing 

 tired of the Horse-chesnut for avenues, adopted the Lime 

 for that purpose in the time of Louis the Fourteenth, and 

 accordingly the approaches to the residences of the French, 

 as well as English gentry, of that date, were bordered with 

 Lime trees.'''' Evelyn, who published his Sylva in 1662, also 

 remarks, in his account of the Lime-tree, that " it is a 

 shameful negligence that we are not better provided of 

 nurseries of a tree so choice and universally acceptable. " 

 It was also generally planted along the streets of conti- 

 nental as well as English towns, where their width would 

 admit of it, as affording a pleasant shade and protection 

 during the summer heats, and was extensively used in 

 Topiary works, and in that style of gardening called archi- 

 tectural, as it bore cutting with the knife or shears with 

 patience and comparative impunity. Examples of this 

 style still exist in some parts of England, and are frequent 

 upon the Continent, in France, and Holland, where py- 

 ramids, arches, and colonnades are formed of this tree, 

 and sometimes produce an imposing effect. In England 

 it appears to have fallen into disrepute about Miller's time, 

 on account, as he states, of its coming late into leaf in 

 spring, and again losing its foliage early in autumn : this 

 objection, however, only holds good when planted in im- 

 proper soils, or situations unsuited to its constitution. The 

 different mode of laying out grounds at the present sera, 

 having abolished the straight and formal avenues of our 

 predecessors, has greatly curtailed the planting of this tree, 

 and it is now only occasionally used in the formation of 

 public walks, or scattered in small numbers in appropriate 

 situations in the grounds of our gentry. 



As an ornamental tree in picturesque gardening, the 



