VI PREFACE. 



others, in all of which the operations of planting, thinning, 

 pruning, and nursery culture, constitute the permanent 

 features, leaving the history of the species to which the 

 above-mentioned operations are meant to refer but slightly 

 touched upon, or forming a very secondary portion of their 

 contents. 



The classic " Sylva" of Evelyn, and the valuable "Ar- 

 boretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, 11 of Loudon, are, 

 however, works to which the present volume approaches 

 nearer in the general outline of its plan ; but as the former 

 was written upwards of a century and a half ago, and 

 at a time when several trees, now naturalized and exten- 

 sively cultivated in Britain, were but little known or re- 

 cently introduced ; and as the latter embraces a much 

 wider field of investigation, besides being voluminous in 

 size and costly in price, and consequently in a great mea- 

 sure confined to the libraries of the opulent, it did not 

 appear to the Author that he was trenching upon ground, 

 either so fully occupied or exhausted previously, as to 

 render another work, (connected as it is with a subject 

 of such importance as the growth and management of 

 British timber,) altogether unnecessary and uncalled for. 



His object, therefore, has been to give, in as concise a 

 manner as seemed consistent with the nature of the sub- 

 ject, such an account of the various forest trees at present 

 cultivated in Britain as might form a volume of informa- 



