132 THE TREES AND SHRUBS [LECT. 



antiquity, in their short, confused, and even incon- 

 sistent descriptions, intended to bring before us. 



Modern botanists, too, have increased the con- 

 fusion, by appropriating to the plants they de- 

 scribe, without due consideration, the names found 

 in ancient works, and these have been adopted 

 without enquiry by many lexicographers. 



Thus &sculus, the name for a species of Oak, 

 is given to the Horse Chesnut, a tree which the 

 ancients certainly were not acquainted with ; the 

 Cytisus, which seems to correspond with the Medi- 

 cago arborea of modern botanists, has been trans- 

 ferred to the Laburnum ; the Sycamore, a name 

 given by the Greeks to a kind of Fig, is applied 

 to a species of Maple, the Acer pseudo-platanus . 



It will therefore not be a matter of surprise, that 

 any catalogue of trees and shrubs given by modern 

 writers, such as the one Loudon u obtained from an 

 Italian botanist, Signor Manetti, should be so much 

 more copious than that which can be collected 

 from any treatise of antiquity ; even after exclud- 

 ing from the list the exotic plants introduced from 

 various parts of the old or new world, of which 

 the ancients knew nothing. 



It may be remarked in general, that the number 

 of frutescent species is for the most part greater in 

 Greece than in Italy a circumstance connected, 

 no doubt, with the more southern latitude of the 

 former country, and explicable on the Darwinian 

 hypothesis, by the greater mildness of the climate, 



u Arboretum, vol. iv. 



