2 SYLVA FL0R1FERA, 



at Syracuse, in Sicily, about 282 years before 

 the Christian era, remarks, that the wolf pur- 

 sues the goat with as much eagerness as the 

 goat hunts for the laburnum ; and Virgil has 

 celebrated it for augmenting the milk of goats. 

 Pliny tells us, that the laburnum belongs to 

 the Alps, and that it was not commonly 

 known in Italy when he wrote his Natural 

 History. He says, the wood is white and 

 hard; and that the bees would not even settle 

 upon the blossoms of this tree.* 



The laburnum has long graced the British 

 gardens, as we learn from Gerard that it 

 flourished in Holborn in 1596. What would 

 be the astonishment of this excellent old 

 herbarist, could he be recalled, to see each 

 avenue of his garden formed into streets ; 

 houses erected on his parsley beds, and 

 chimneys sprung up as thick as his aspara- 

 gus ; churches occupying the site of his 

 arbours, and his tool-house, perhaps, con- 

 verted into the British Museum, where is 

 safely housed the lasting memorial of his 

 labours. In vain would he now seek wild 

 plants in Mary-le-bone, where each blade of 

 grass is transformed into granite, and every 

 hawthorn hedge changed for piles of bricks : 

 carriages rattling where snails were formerly 



* Rook xvi. chap. 18. 



