INTRODUCTION. 
AMONG all the varied productions with which Nature has adorned the sur- 
face of the earth, none awakens our sympathies, or interests our imagination, 
so powerfully. as those venerable trees which seem to have stood the lapse of ages, 
silent witnesses of the successive generations of man, to whose destiny they bear 
so touching a resemblance, alike in their budding, their prime, and their decay. 
Hence, in all ages, the earliest dawn of civilization has been marked by a 
reverence of woods and groves: devotion has fled to their recesses, for the per- 
formance of her most solemn rites ; princes have chosen the embowering shade of 
some wide-spreading tree, under which to receive the deputations of the neighbour- 
ing “great ones of the earth;” and angels themselves, it is recorded, have not dis- 
dained to deliver their celestial messages beneath the same verdant canopy. To sit 
under the shadow of his own fig-tree, and drink of the fruit of his own vine, is the 
reward promised, in Holy Writ, to the righteous man; and the gratification arising 
from the sight of a favourite and long-remembered tree, is one enjoyed in common 
by the nobleman, who is reminded, as its branches wave over his head, whilst wan- 
dering in his hereditary domains, of the illustrious ancestors by whom it may have 
been planted; and the peasant, who, passing it in his way to his daily labours, re- 
calls, as he looks on it, the sports of his infancy round its venerable trunk, and 
regards it at once as his chronicler and land-mark. 
To preserve the characteristics, and perpetuate the remembrance of some of the 
most striking of these objects, in themselves so interesting, is the design of the 
Sytva Brirannica: in the descriptions, therefore, which accompany the plates, it 
will be found, that although the minutiee of botanical definitions are omitted, as 
unnecessary, and even misplaced, in a work of so general a nature, every cir- 
cumstance of local connexion, or traditional interest, has been carefully attended 
to; and gratified, indeed, will the author be, should his performance inspire in the 
minds of those who may favour it with their attention, even a small portion of the 
pleasure which he has himself experienced, whilst haunting the woods and forests, 
intent on delineating those varieties and peculiarities of their noblest productions, 
which he has endeavoured to transfer to the following representations, with as much 
of the spirit of Nature as he could command, and with all the truth, which minute 
remark, and faithful imitation may, he hopes, lay claim to, without hazarding the 
imputation of undue presumption. 
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