CLVII.— THE BOX. 
Buxus sempervirens Linne. 
T HE small Family Buxacece has generally been treated merely as a sub-division 
of the Euphorbiacece ; but, though they have the unisexual, apetalous flowers, 
and the three united carpels forming an explosive fruit, characteristic of that Family, 
the raphe is dorsal. They are evergreen trees or shrubs with exstipulate leathery 
leaves and a watery juice, belonging mostly to the warmer regions of the Old World. 
The genus Buxus includes fewer than twenty species, with monoecious flowers 
which secrete some honey, though they are largely pollinated by wind. These 
flowers are small and are crowded together in cymose clusters with a central female 
blossom surrounded by a number of staminate ones. 
The Common Box ( B . sempervirens Linne) occurs over most of the Palaearctic 
Region ; and, although it only appears wild at the present day in a very few localities 
in our southern counties, there is no great reason to doubt its indigenous character. 
The name Boxmoor in Hertfordshire was probably originally Bogsmoor, thus having 
nothing to do with this tree ; but Boxley in Kent and Boxhill in Surrey may well be 
named from it. Though the name Box is represented by very similar forms in Celtic 
and Slavonic languages, these may be only loan-words from the Latin. The hard, 
compact, and even-grained yellow wood, the only European wood that will not float 
in water, was known at an early date as being, in the words of Dryden’s Virgil : — 
“ Smooth-grained, and proper for the turner’s trade, 
Which curious hands may carve, and steel with ease invade.” 
Its Greek name 7ru£o9, puxos, gave rise to words signifying a small box turned 
from its wood, of which we retain the word “ pyx ” as well as “ box ” ; and both 
Virgil and Ovid refer to its use among the Romans for the manufacture of musical 
instruments, using, in fact, the word buxus for a flute. Pliny and Vitruvius allude 
also to the use of the shrub in the formal “ topiary ” work, or clipped garden 
hedges, of which their contemporaries were fond ; and sprigs of Box were, no doubt, 
employed in weaving festal garlands at their banquets. This may be the explanation 
of the many well-preserved branches, obtained from the wells at Silchester, the 
ancient Calleva, which can be seen in the Museum at Reading. 
A considerable proportion of the boxwood of modern commerce, shipped from 
Odessa and Constantinople, is the produce of a larger-growing species, Buxus balearica 
Lamarck ; but there is no reason to suspect that the large number of Box-trees 
growing with other trees in the Pyrenees, at St. Claude in the Jura, and in the Forest 
of Ligny, are the result of Roman introduction. In Britain, however, the tree may 
well have had this origin, since the earliest references to it known to us are the names 
of Adam and Henry de Buxeto, i.e. of the Box-grove, in Surrey charters of the reigns 
of John and Henry III. There is much to be said in favour of the threefold test of 
