CHAP. V. LITERATURE. 187 



CHAP. V. 



OF THE LITERATURE OF THE TREES AND SHRUBS OF TEMPERATE 



CLIMATES. 



A history of trees and shrubs would be incomplete, without some notice 

 of the literature to which the subject has given rise. In the earlier works 

 on plants, trees and shrubs, as being the more conspicuous division of the 

 vegetable kingdom, occupy a considerable space; and, in modern times, whole 

 works have been exclusively devoted to them. It is only our intention to 

 notice, in a very slight manner, the names of the more remarkable of the 

 works which have been exclusively devoted to the history and description of 

 trees and shrubs, referring, for a chronological enumeration of all the authors 

 who have written on the subject in modern languages, to the second edition 

 of our Encyclopedia of Gardenings and to a posthumous work of the late 

 Mr. Forsyth (see Gard. Mag., vol. xi. p. 596.), entitled Bibliotheca Geoponica, 

 which will shortly be published. 



We have already noticed Aristotle and Theophrastus, as the principal 

 Greek authors who wrote on trees, and Pliny is almost the only Roman 

 one. The information contained in the works of these authors, with some 

 additions from the writings of Cato, Columella, Vitruvius, and others, was 

 used in a new form, on the dawn of literature in the end of the 15th and the 

 beginning of the 16th centuries, in the works on husbandry generally, by 

 Crescentius in Italy (1471), by Fitzherbert in England (1523), Etienne in 

 France (1529), Heresbach in Germany (1578), and Herrera in Spain (1595). 

 The first author who wrote exclusively on trees and shrubs appears to have 

 been Belon, a doctor of medicine of the faculty of Paris, who produced a 

 small quarto volume, entitled De Arboribus Comferis, Resiniferis, &c, printed 

 at Paris in 1523, and illustrated with a number of engravings on wood. Our 

 copy is the original edition, and consists of thirty-two printed pages, and twenty 

 engravings. Different species of Juniperus and Cupressus, the Thuja orien- 

 talis, Cedrus Libani, and several pines and firs, including the Larix, are de- 

 scribed and figured; and a number of other plants are mentioned incidentally. 

 Meursius published De Arborum, Fruticum, et Herbarum, &c, in one volume 

 8vo, at Leyden, in 1600; but, in this work, the medical properties of plants ap- 

 pear to be the main object of the writer. The next work exclusively devoted 

 to the subject of trees is the Dendrograpkia of John Johnston, a Pole, 

 whose work was published in one volume folio, at Frankfort, in 1662. In 

 this work trees and shrubs generally are treated on, and fruit trees at 

 considerable length. It is illustrated with numerous figures, and the ob- 

 ject of the author seems to have been to direct attention to the trees 

 which bore edible fruits, or were remarkable for their medical properties. 

 In 1668 the Dendrologia Naturalis of Aldrovandus, in one volume folio, ap- 

 peared at Bon. It is a very thick folio volume, illustrated by numerous 

 engravings, and the medical qualities of the plants arc chiefly insisted on. 

 Aldrovandus was born at Bologna in 1557, and died in 1625; he was a great 

 traveller, and one of the most laborious naturalists of the sixteen century. 



In England, the first work exclusively devoted to trees and shrubs was 

 Evelyn's Sylva, which was published in one volume folio, in 1664. Every 

 one knows the influence which this work had in promoting a taste for plant- 

 ing trees throughout England. It went through several editions during the 

 author's lifetime ; and, since his death, an enlarged edition in 2 vols. 4to, 

 with several engravings, edited by Dr. Hunter of York, was published in 

 1776; and again, with some improvements, in 1786. The first work, after 

 Evelyn's, which was exclusively devoted to trees and shrubs was, the Descrip- 

 tive Catalogue of the Trees and Shrubs propagated for Sale in the neighbourhood 

 of London, by a Society of Gardeners, which we have noticed in p. 60. It 



