156 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



well acquainted is that belonging to my old friend Lord Ducie at 

 Tortworth, who must be the oldest living arboriculturist, and who, 

 though aged ninety-one, is still, I am glad to think, able to go 

 about among his treasures and retain his interest in them. As 

 Claudian, a late Roman poet, expresses this idea : 



" Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum, 

 Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus ! " 



which when rendered into English verse by Cowley becomes : 



" A neighbouring wood born with himself he sees, 

 And loves his old contemporary trees." 



There the specimens are far older and larger than mine, and two 

 can be seen, viz. Quercus cinerea and Q. glauca, which I have not the 

 good luck to own at all. Nevertheless the Aldenham collection, in 

 so far as concerns the mere number of different species and varieties of 

 oaks represented, is far the more complete of the two. 



It will at once be noticed that my accounts of trees are not couched 

 in orthodox botanical jargon. It is true I do not go the length of 

 Mr. Robinson, who would like to see all plants called by English 

 names ; for, to begin with there are no English names for numbers of 

 plants, including all the more recent introductions. They w r ould have 

 to be invented, and who could guarantee their general adoption ? 

 Again, there would arise constant confusion, owing either to the same 

 plant having different names (the ' Lad's Love ' of Lancashire is ' Old 

 Man ' in the South), or to terms like ' Bridal Wreath,' or ' Love in a 

 Mist,' or ' Devil in a Mist,' or ' Dog in a Blanket ' being applied in 

 one place to one plant and in another to another. This I can illustrate 

 by telling how I was lately taken in myself. A friend was going round 

 the garden and remarked " I don't see the Red Gum here. It is so 

 beautiful and does perfectly well in Scotland." I replied " You 

 can't mean Eucalyptus rostrata, for that is exceedingly tender." Still 

 I made sure that he was talking about some hardy Eucalypt with 

 which I was unacquainted, and told him I should be delighted to have 

 it. When it arrived it proved to be an Arbutus ! or, to use popular 

 language, a ' Strawberry Tree ' — a name that is quite as often applied 

 to a representative of a totally different genus, Benthamia fragifera, 

 which belongs to the Cornus family. Take again the case of Acer 

 Pseudo-plalanus : in England this species of maple is popularly known 

 as a Sycamore, and among Scots as a Plane, there being grave objection 

 to both these names. Further, some popular names are founded in 

 error and tend to disseminate it, e.g. ' Mountain Ash.' A clever but 

 uneducated old gardener once announced to me his intention to graft 

 a fine form of this on some young Ashes which had sown themselves 

 in the garden, and I had some difficulty in convincing him that he 

 might as well try and graft them on the tail of his coat. Had he 

 been accustomed to regard one as a Pyrus and the other as a Fraxinus, 

 he would not have been tempted to try and amalgamate them. It 



