PREFATORY ix 
rare holiday. Various other causes militate against 
such expeditions—want of leisure, lack of where- 
withal, and yet one more still cogent reason, brevity 
‘of life. 
“Of making books,’’ said the preacher, ‘‘ there is 
no end,” and of hunting up trees, say we, there is 
no finality. 
A survey from China to Peru, if carried out in 
entirety, would not exhaust the question. 
Then, again, it should be emphasized that nothing 
is written here with any remote idea of aiding the 
expert ; our sense of proportion is far too acutely alive 
to nourish for a minute such a thought. The book is 
addressed only to those who take up such subjects 
more in the light of a secondary or subsidiary accom- 
plishment. To the few only is it given to pursue to 
the core any pet scheme of life. The majority have. 
to spend a larger proportion of their time upon earth 
in following up duties that give them rather less 
than great abstract pleasure. There are many, to 
employ university metaphor, who though they are 
debarred by the perversities of fate from aiming at 
a class in the Honours school, may be desirous of 
matriculating in the subject, or perchance even 
obtaining a ¢estamur in the pass examination tests. 
One thing, we are told, leads to another, and if this 
little effort on the behalf of arboriculture induces 
any to go farther in Altiora Peto spirit, and to try 
to scale the more Olympian heights of a fascinating 
subject, the labour will not have been in vain, and 
the labourer’s light task more than amply recom- 
pensed. 
