134 THE TREES AND SHRUBS [LECT. 



at least, if not with the Walnut ; the former cover- 

 ing in Tuscany and the south of France large tracts 

 of country, and seeming as much entitled to the term 

 of aborigines as the Oak or the Fir. 



Nor can it be said that these trees require the 

 fostering care of man to maintain themselves in the 

 countries where they existed in ancient days, as the 

 Chesnut seems to do in England, and the Date 

 Palm in Italy and Greece, for both ripen their fruit 

 to perfection, issuing spontaneously from the ground 

 from seeds self-planted, and are able to withstand 

 the most rigorous cold ever experienced in those 

 countries without being dwarfed or blighted in 

 consequence. 



This position does not of course exclude any 

 speculations that may be indulged in, as to the 

 mode in which plants became disseminated by 

 natural causes from the centres in which each may 

 be supposed to have been originally created, under 

 a different configuration of sea and land than that 

 which now exists. 



But this was at least a process requiring a vast 

 duration of time, probably indeed being long ante- 

 cedent to the peopling of the country by its human 

 inhabitants. 



It seems certain, that forests of Oak, of Chesnut, 

 and of Beech must have established themselves 

 throughout Europe before man took possession of 

 the country, for unless we conceive that the first 

 settlers brought with them seed-corn and other do- 

 mestic vegetables, and had already passed through 



