Diemen's Land, in addition to the species of eucalyptus, acacia, callistemon, and sida, which live as standards through the ordinary winters in the neighbourhood of London without protection.

A number of the ligneous trees and shrubs of Europe, and some also from other parts of the world, have been taken to New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, by the settlers; and every year packages of plants which stand the open air in England, as well as of house plants, are sent out by the nurserymen. In the botanic garden at Sydney there was in 1828, a collection, which included the fruit trees of every part of the world, as far as they could be collected, and also many of the principal European timber trees and flowering shrubs. An account of this collection by the then curator of the garden, Mr. Charles Fraser, will be found in the Gardener's Magazine, vol. v. p. 280. It is there stated that the European trees stood the extreme drought of the year 1827-28 better than those of warmer climates; and, while oranges, times, shaddocks, guavas, &c., were completely burnt up, apples, pears, &c., stood the shock without any apparent injury. To give an idea of the "capabilities of the climate," Mr. Fraser states that, in "an exposed part of the garden, may be seen growing luxuriantly, in a dense thicket formed by themselves, the following trees; viz., the English ash and elm, Erythrina Corallodendrum in full flower, Bombax heptaphyllum, Gymnócladus canadensis, Ficus elástica, Dalbergia Sissoo, Téctona grándis, Pìnus Pináster and halepénsis, Catálpa syringefolia, the English lime and sycamore, the mossy-cupped and English oak, Acàcia tamariscina, Salisbùria adiantifòlia, the tea and olive, and many others." The trees of Van Diemen's Land appear to be among the most gigantic of the whole world. Mr. James Backhouse, an English nurseryman who spent some time in Hobart Town and its neighbourhood, and has communicated some interesting information on the vegetation of that country to the Gardener's Magazine (see vol. xi. p. 388.), gives the following measurement of ten trees of the Eucalyptus robústa, or the stringy-bark tree. They all stood in the neighbourhood of the Emu river, and the circumference of all the trunks were taken at 4 ft. from the ground.

No.

No. 1., 45 ft. in circumference; supposed height 180 ft. The top broken, as is the case with most large-trunked trees; the trunk a little injured by decay, but not hollow. The tree had an excrescence at the base 12 ft. across and 6 ft. high, protruding about 3 ft. No. 2., 371 ft. in circumference. 3., 38 ft. in circumference; distant from No. 2. 80 yards. No. 4. 38 ft. in circumference; distant from No. 3. 56 yards. Nos. 3 and 4. were round trees, upwards of 200 ft. high. No. 5., 28 ft. in circumference. No. 6., 30 ft. in circumference. No. 7., 32 ft. in circumference. No. 8., 55 ft. in circumference; very little injured by decay; and upwards of 200 ft. high. No. 9., 40 ft. in circumference; sound and tall. No. 10., 48 ft. in circumference; tubercled; tall; some cavities at the base; much of the top gone. A prostrate tree near to No. 1. was 35 ft. in circumference at the base, 22 ft. at 66 ft. 19 ft. at 110 ft. up; there were two large branches at 120 ft.; the general head branched off at 150 ft. the elevation of the tree, traceable by the branches on the ground, 213 ft.

In the First Additional Supplement to the Encyclopædia of Agriculture will be found portraits, drawn from nature, of several of the trees mentioned as having been measured by Mr. Backhouse, drawn by Mr. John Thompson, a friend of ours, and an excellent artist, settled at Sydney. The iron-bark tree (Eucalyptus resinífera) measured by Mr. Thompson is 200 ft. high, with a clean straight trunk of 130 ft. The most remarkable of these trees in appearance is the grass tree (Xanthorrhoe`a arboréscens).

Mr. Thomas Backhouse has sown the seeds of several species of the trees and shrubs of Mount Wellington and other elevated and exposed situations in Van Diemen's Land, in his nursery at York, and he expresses a hope in a few years to prove their hardiness; and, as they are all evergreens, they will be valuable auxiliaries to our park scenery.

CHAP. V.

OF THE LITERATURE OF THE TREES AND SHRUBS OF TEMPERATE CLIMATES.

A HISTORY of trees and shrubs would be incomplete, without some notice of the literature to which the subject has given rise. In the earlier works on plants, trees and shrubs, as being the more conspicuous division of the vegetable kingdom, occupy a considerable space; and, in modern times, whole works have been exclusively devoted to them. It is only our intention to notice, in a very slight manner, the names of the more remarkable of the works which have been exclusively devoted to the history and description of trees and shrubs, referring, for a chronological enumeration of all the authors who have written on the subject in modern languages, to the second edition of our Encyclopædia of Gardening, and to a posthumous work of the late Mr. Forsyth (see Gard. Mag., vol. xi. p. 596.), entitled Bibliotheca Geoponica, which will shortly be published.

We have already noticed Aristotle and Theophrastus, as the principal Greek authors who wrote on trees, and Pliny is almost the only Roman one. The information contained in the works of these authors, with some additions from the writings of Cato, Columella, Vitruvius, and others, was used in a new form, on the dawn of literature in the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, in the works on husbandry generally, by Crescentius in Italy (1471), by Fitzherbert in England (1523), Etienne in France (1529), Heresbach in Germany (1578), and Herrera in Spain (1595). The first author who wrote exclusively on trees and shrubs appears to have been Belon, a doctor of medicine of the faculty of Paris, who produced a small quarto volume, entitled De Arboribus Coniferis, Resiniferis, &c., printed at Paris in 1523, and illustrated with a number of engravings on wood. Our copy is the original edition, and consists of thirty-two printed pages, and twenty engravings. Different species of Juniperus and Cupressus, the Thuja orientalis, Cedrus Libàni, and several pines and firs, including the Làrix, are described and figured; and a number of other plants are mentioned incidentally. Meursius published De Arborum, Fruticum, et Herbarum, &c., in one volume Svo, at Leyden, in 1600; but, in this work, the medical properties of plants appear to be the main object of the writer. The next work exclusively devoted to the subject of trees is the Dendrographia of John Johnston, a Pole, whose work was published in one volume folio, at Frankfort, in 1662. In this work trees and shrubs generally are treated on, and fruit trees at considerable length. It is illustrated with numerous figures, and the object of the author seems to have been to direct attention to the trees which bore edible fruits, or were remarkable for their medical properties. In 1668 the Dendrologia Naturalis of Aldrovandus, in one volume folio, appeared at Bon. It is a very thick folio volume, illustrated by numerous engravings, and the medical qualities of the plants arc chiefly insisted on. Aldrovandus was born at Bologna in 1557, and died in 1625; he was a great traveller, and one of the most laborious naturalists of the sixteen century.

In England, the first work exclusively devoted to trees and shrubs was Evelyn's Sylva, which was published in one volume folio, in 1664. Every one knows the influence which this work had in promoting a taste for planting trees throughout England. It went through several editions during the author's lifetime; and, since his death, an enlarged edition in 2 vols. 4to, with several engravings, edited by Dr. Hunter of York, was published in 1776; and again, with some improvements, in 1786. The first work, after Evelyn's, which was exclusively devoted to trees and shrubs was, the Descriptive Catalogue of the Trees and Shrubs propagated for Sale in the neighbourhood of London, by a Society of Gardeners, which we have noticed in p. 60. It

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 Linnæus.

With the exception of nurserymen's catalogues, and some works on planting and managing trees and plantations generally, nothing exclusively devoted to the subject of trees appeared in Britain, till Hanbury published his Essay on Planting 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 horticulturally, previously to the commencement of the nineteenth century, was the Dictionary of Miller. The Earl of Haddington, in Scotland, published a Trea tise 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 list is given at the end of the second volume of Morel's Théorie 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; and, in 1777, Dr. Anderson, under the name of Agricola, published Various Thoughts on Planting and Training Timber Trees. Planting and Rural Ornament was published by William Marshall in 1796, in 2 vols. 8vo, 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 Planter's Calendar, 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 ForestPruner 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 8vo, price 127. 12s. In 1811, Dr. Wade of Dublin produced a descriptive work on the willow, entitled Salices, in one volume 8vo; and, in 1823, Mr. 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 8vo, 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 8vo, in 1825. The first volume contains 80 plates, and the second 90 plates. The letterpress, with the exception of 72 pages of introductory 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 who 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 published 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 botanists, is Don's edition of Miller's Dictionary, in four volumes 4to, price 14/.

In France, the first really important work on trees, in modern times, is the Traité des Arbres et Arbustes, by Du Hamel du Monceau, which was published in Paris, in two volumes 4to, in 1755. In this work the nomenclature of Tournefort is followed, but the names of Linnæus are also given; it is illustrated with numerous figures, partly taken, as the author informs us, from the blocks which were used in the Commentaries of Mathiolus; and partly engraved on purpose for the work. The first volume contains 368 pages and 275 engravings, and the second 387 pages and 199 engravings. The original edition is not very common, and, when met with in London, sells at from thirty to forty shillings. A new edition of this work was commenced in the year 1800, and it was completed in seven volumes folio in 1819. The letterpress of these volumes was prepared by Mirbel, Loiseleur Deslongchamps, and other botanists; and the drawings were by Redouté, Bessa, &c. The published price of a royal folio copy was 1247. 10s., and of a common copy nearly 1001. The species are arranged according to the Linnæan system; and the number of engravings of trees and shrubs, including some engravings of fruits, amounts to 498. Both engravings and descriptions are of very unequal merit, and many of the former (at least in our copy, which is a large paper one) are altogether unworthy of the consequence attempted to be given to the work by large type, large paper, and other characteristics of the mode, now gone by both in France and England, of publishing for the few. As a proof of the truth of what we assert, large paper copies may now be purchased in London for between 301. and 407., and small paper copies for twenty guineas.

In 1809, while the new edition of Du Hamel was slowly publishing in parts, the Histoire des Arbres et Arbrisseaux, by M. Desfontaines, appeared in two volumes 8vo, and is still a work of repute. In 1824, Traité des Arbres Forestières, ou Histoire et Description des Arbres Indigènes, naturalisés, dont le tige a de trente à cent vingt pieds d'élévation, &c., par M. Jaune St. Hilaire et M. Thouin, appeared in one volume 4to, with coloured plates, price 10. The plates are badly executed, and the work, with the exception of the part written by Thouin, is of a very inferior description,

André Michaux, a notice of whose life has been given, p. 140., published Histoire des Chènes de l'Amérique, in one volume folio, in 1801; and his son, F. A. Michaux, published Histoire des Arbres Forestières de l'Amérique Septentrionale, in three volumes, large 8vo, in 1812. Of this work there is an Eng lish translation entitled the American Sylva, which was published in Paris, in 1817, at nine guineas plain, or twelve guineas coloured. F. A. Michaux's work contains 156 plates, including figures of all the oaks described in the Histoire des Chènes, and is an excellent work, which still maintains its price both in Paris and London. We ought not to pass unnoticed Le Botaniste Cultivateur of Du Mont de Courset, in seven volumes 8vo, which was com pleted in 1814, and which, though it contains herbaceous and house plants, as well as ligneous hardy plants, is yet more complete in its descriptions of the latter than any other work, except Du Hamel's. There is no French work which brings down the description and history of trees and shrubs to the present time; but, if we were asked what works we would recommend, as making the nearest approach to this, we should say, Le Botaniste Cultivateur; Les Annales de Fromont; Le Bon Jardinier, the edition of which work for the current year contains notices of all the plants newly introduced; and, above all, the excellent Prodromus of De Candolle, now in course of publication, and of which four volumes 8vo, price 57., have already appeared.

The

In Holland, the only work exclusively devoted to trees and shrubs which, we have heard of, is by Krause, and the title is, Afbeeldingen der Fraaiste, Meestwitheemsche Boomen en Heesters, &c. It appeared at Amsterdam in 1802, in one thick royal 4to volume, the price of which in London is 10. plates in our copy are executed in a very superior manner, and they are coloured with much more care than those of either Willdenow, Schmidt, or Du Hamel. Some of the German works describing the different kinds of wood were published at Amsterdam, as well as at Leipzic; particularly that

published by Sepps, which appeared in one volume 4to, in 1773, at both places; and at Amsterdam, with a translation of the German descriptions into Dutch. It was published at about 15/., and sells in London for from 87. to 10%.

In Germany, the first work exclusively devoted to trees and shrubs, which was published in modern times, was the Harbkesche Baumzucht theils nordamerikenischer und fremder, &c., of J. P. Du Roi, which appeared in two volumes 8vo. in 1771-2; to this succeeded the Osterreiches allgemeine Baumzucht of Schmidt, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1792, and the third in 1800 price 10. This is an excellent work as far as it goes. The next German work which appeared was the Berlinische Baumzucht of C. L. Willdenow, in one volume 8vo, the second edition of which appeared in 1811. In this volume are described all the trees and shrubs which grew at the time in the Berlin Botanic Garden. It is observed by Watson, in his introduction to his Dendrologia, p. vii., that, in the Berlinische Baumzucht, "the parts of the plant in each description are placed in the same order, and not in the often vague, slovenly, and reiterated way of many botanic writers." In 1810, appeared the first number of Abbildung der deutschen Holzarten, &c., by F. Guimpel, C. L. Willdenow, and F. G. Hayne. It was completed with 36 numbers in 1820. It contains 216 coloured plates, and the price in London is 167. In 1819, another work on the trees of Germany appeared, which included all those foreign species which stand the open air in that country. It is entitled Abbildung der fremden in Deutschland ausdauernden Holzarten, &c.; by F. Guimpel, F. Otto, and F. G. Hayne. It forms one volume 4to., contains 100 plates, and costs in London 67. The Germans have a species of publication, or rather portable museum, which they call Holzbibliothek (Wood Library). A hundred or more sorts of wood, with dried specimens of the leaves, flowers, seed, and winter's wood of each species, are put loose into little cases about the size of 8vo volumes, and these are finished exteriorly like books, and the back lettered with the name of the wood in different languages. There are two libraries of this description, which are more particularly in repute; one published at Munich, and the other at Nuremberg. The former contains 100 sorts of wood, and costs about 100/., and the latter 80 sorts, and costs 807. There are also engravings and descriptions of these woods, at various prices from 10l. to 301.; one of the best of these is Hildte's, published at Weimar in 1798, price 157.

We are not aware of any other work of magnitude exclusively devoted to the description and history of trees and shrubs, having been published in any of the other countries of Europe; but in America, besides the English translation of Michaux,, already mentioned, which appeared there as well as in Paris, in 1817, there is the Sylva Americana of D. J. Brown, which was published at Boston in 1832. The cost in London of this work is 17. 18.

It will be recollected, that in this notice we have only given the titles of the principal works devoted exclusively to the description and history of trees and shrubs, those which treat on the formation and management of plantations, on forests and woodlands, and on planting trees generally, whether for useful or ornamental purposes, are exceedingly numerous, and will be passed under review in the Introduction to the Fourth Part of this work.

CHAP. VI.

CONCLUSION.

Two considerations may be drawn from the preceding history: the first, respecting the introduction of foreign trees and shrubs; and the second, respecting arboricultural literature.

On comparing the lists which we have given of ligneous plants, found in