188 



HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF TREES. PART I. 



forms a thin volume folio, and appeared in 1730. These are the only 

 works of note, which appeared on the subject of trees exclusively, previously 

 to the time of Linnaeus. 



With the exception of nurserymen's catalogues, and some works on plant- 

 ing and managing trees and plantations generally, nothing exclusively devoted 

 to the subject of trees appeared in Britain, till Hanbury published his JEssay 

 on Plant 'mg in 1758 : a ponderous folio never in much esteem, and of very 

 little interest. Indeed, the only gardening book in England in which trees 

 and shrubs were described, and' treated of botanically as well as horticul- 

 turally, previously to the commencement of the nineteenth century, was the 

 Bictionary of Miller. The Earl of Haddington, in Scotland, pubhshed a Trea^ 

 Use on Forest Trees, in 12mo, in 1760 ; but it can only be considered as a work 

 descriptive of trees and shrubs generally. In 1771, Meader, gardener to the 

 Duke of Northumberland at Syon House, published the Planter''s Guide, 

 which is little more than a list of trees, with an imaginary engraving showing 

 their comparative heights. A similar Hst is given at the end of the second 

 volume of Morel's Theorie des Jardins, the second edition of which appeared 

 in 1802. In 1772, W. Butcher, a nurseryman at Edinburgh, published a 

 Treatise on Forest Trees, already mentioned as a valuable work for the time at 

 which it appeared J and, in 1777, Dr. Anderson, under the name of Agricola, 

 published Various Thoughts on Planting and Training Timber Trees. Planting 

 and Rural Ornament ws-s published by William Marshall in 1796, in 2 vols.Svo, 

 one of which is devoted to the description of trees and shrubs, chiefly, as the 

 author acknowledges, taken from Hanbury and Miller. In 1779, Walter 

 Nicol published the Practical Planter, and subsequently the Plantei-'s Calen- 

 dar, an edition of which, edited, or rather, rewritten by Mr. Sang, and published 

 in 1812, in 1 vol. 8vo, is the last and the best work on trees and shrubs which 

 has appeared in Scotland. 



With the first year of the nineteenth century appeared the Planter and Forest- 

 Prune)' of William Pontey ; but this and the other works on planting of that 

 author belong to the general subject of culture, rather than to the description 

 and history of trees and shrubs. In 1803, Lambert's Monograph of the genus 

 Pinus appeared in one volume folio, price twenty guineas ; a second volume 

 has since been added ; and, in conformity with the spirit of the times, an edition 

 has been published in two volumes Svo, price 12/. \2s. In 1811, Dr. Wade 

 of Dublin produced a descriptive work on the 'willow, entitled »Sa/ic<?5, in one 

 volume 8vo ; and, in 1823, Henry Philips produced, in two volumes 8vo, 

 Sylva Florifera, in which the more common ornamental trees and shrubs are 

 treated of in a popular and agreeable manner. Passing over the Woodlands of 

 Cobbett, which appeared in 1826, in one volume Svo, we come to the most 

 scientific work exclusively devoted to trees which has hitherto been published 

 in England, the Dendrologia Britannica of P. W. Watson, which was completed 

 in two volumes Svo, in 1825. The first volume contains 80 plates, and the 

 second 90 plates. The letterpress, with the exception of 72 pages of intro- 

 ductory matter, consists solely of technical descriptions of the figures, arranged 

 in a tabular form under a given number of heads ; a very effectual mode of 

 preventing any point, necessary to be attended to in the description of a plant, 

 from escaping the notice of the describer. In this respect, the work is superior 

 to some of its contemporaries, in which the descriptions are sometimes rather 

 disorderly if complete; and are often incomplete, apparently from want of being 

 taken in some fixed and comprehensive order. Mr. Watson was a tradesman 

 in Hull, who afterwards retired from business ; and he was one of the principal 

 persons vdio assisted in founding, and afterwards in laying out and managing, 

 the Hull Botanic Garden, as stated in the introduction to his Dendrologia, 

 p. xii. He died, we believe, in 1827. The only work hitherto pubhshed in 

 England, which contains a description of all the hardy trees and shrubs in the 

 country, in addition to that of all other plants, ligneous and herbaceous, 

 described by European botanistSj is Don's edition of Miller's Dictionary, in four 

 volumes ito, price 14/. . 



