INTRODUCTION. 



13 



infancy. An English landowner is almost always a great re- 

 specter of trees generally, but seldom knows anything of par- 

 ticular sorts : he, therefore, cares very little for their individual 

 beauties, and contents himself with being an indiscriminate 

 admirer of them. Hence the unwillingness of most persons to 

 cut down trees, however improperly they may be placed ; or to 

 thin out plantations, however much they may be crowded, and 

 however great may be the injury which the finer foreign sorts 

 are sustaining from the coarser-growing indigenous kinds. This 

 indiscriminate regard for trees, and morbid feeling with reference 

 to cutting them down when they are wrongly placed or too 

 thick, principally results from ignorance of the kinds and of the 

 relative beauty of the different species, 'and from want of taste in 

 landscape-gardening. When we consider that it is not much 

 above a century since American trees began to be purchasable 

 in the nurseries of this country, this is not to be wondered at; 

 and, more especially, when it is remembered that planters, 

 generally speaking, have few opportunities of seeing specimens 

 of these trees, so as to become acquainted with them, and thus 

 to acquire a taste for this kind of beauty and its pursuit. The 

 public botanic and horticultural gardens, and the private arbo- 

 retums and collections of foreign trees and shrubs, now esta- 

 blishing throughout the country; and the mode now becoming 

 general among nurserymen, of planting specimen trees in their 

 nurseries ; will tend to remedy this defect, by exhibiting living 

 specimens : and our Arboretum et 'Fruticetum Britannicum will, 

 we trust, aid in attaining the same end. 



To artists, the Arhoretum et 'Fruticetum Britannicum will not 

 be without its use. It is well known that there are but few 

 landscape-painters who possess that kind of knowledge of trees 

 which is necessary to enable them to produce such portraits as 

 would indicate the kind to a gardener or a forester. This 

 defect, on the part of landscape-painters, arises partly from their 

 copying from one another in towns, rather than from nature in 

 the country ; but, principally, from their want of what may be 

 technically called botanical knowledge. The correct touch of a 

 tree, to use the language of art, can no more be acquired with- 

 out studying the mode of foliation of that tree, than the correct 

 mouldings of a Grecian or Gothic cornice can be understood or 

 represented without the study of Grecian or Gothic architecture. 

 It is for this reason that it will always be found that ladies who 

 reside in the country, and have studied botany, if they have 

 a taste for landscape, will imitate the touch of trees better than 

 professional landscape-painters. We assert it as a fact, without 

 the least hesitation, that the majority of British artists (we may 

 say, of all artists whatever) do not even know the means of ac- 

 quiring a scientific knowledge of the touch of trees ; almost the 

 only works which have noticed the subject, and gone beyond the 



