has performed the most essential service to the English navy. Walking, one day, in the woods belonging to the Duke of Beaufort, near Troy-house, in the county of Monmouth, Colonna's attention was diverted by a squirrel, sitting very composedly upon the ground. He stopped to observe his motions. In a few minutes the squirrel darted like lightning to the top of a tree, beneath which it had been sitting. In an instant it was down with an acorn in its mouth, and began to burrow the earth with its hands. After digging a small hole, it stooped down, and deposited the acorn: then covering it, darted up the tree again. In a moment it was down with another, which it buried in the same manner. This the squirrel continued to do, as long as Colonna thought proper to watch it. The industry of this little animal is directed to the purpose of security against want in the winter; and as it is probable, that its memory is not sufficiently retentive to enable it to remember the spots, in which it deposits every acorn, the industrious little fellow, no doubt, loses a few every year. These few spring up, and are destined to supply the place of the parent tree! Thus is Britain, in some measure, indebted to the industry and bad memory of a squirrel,

-That leaps from tree to tree,

And shells his nuts at liberty,

for her pride, her glory, and her very existence.

XII.

England prides herself upon her oaks, and France upon her vines. Near Bourdeaux, upon the Garonne,

grow the grapes of which they make claret; in the southern departments are made the best muscat, frontigniac, and hermitage. But of all countries in Europe, those departments along each side of the Loire are most abounding in variety and abundance of fruit. In summer, cherries, apricots, currants, and other early fruits; in autumn, grapes, pears, peaches, almonds, apples, filberts, or walnuts, enrich almost every field. The owners of these vineyards and orchards are the inhabitants; and their landed property occupies every intermediate gradation, from two hundred acres to the rood. The smallest estates comprising within the space of a rood, a garden, a corn-field, a vineyard, and an orchard. The inhabitants of these regions call the Loire " the river of love;" and many poetical sentences are inscribed in rude characters on the trees that grow upon its banks, and not unfrequently on the cottages themselves.

Nothing in the new continent is more striking than the exuberance of its vegetable productions. "When a traveller newly arrived from Europe," says M. Humboldt, "penetrates, for the first time, into the forests of South America, nature presents herself to him under an unexpected aspect. He feels at every step that he is not on the confines, but in the centre of the torrid zone; not in one of the West India Islands, but on a vast continent; where every thing is gigantic; the mountains, the rivers, and the mass of vegetation. If he feel strongly the beauty of picturesque scenery, he can scarcely define the various emotions, which crowd upon his mind; for he can scarcely distinguish what most excites his admiration; the deep silence of those solitudes; the beauty and contrast of

forms; or that freshness and vigour of vegetable life, which characterise the climate of the tropics 1."

XIII.

The only resemblance that Europe ever presented to these primeval forests, was that of Hercynia, so often alluded to by Cesar, Livy, and Marcellinus. But even this could never have borne comparison with those mighty solitudes, where the sun in the day, and the moon and stars at night, bound the vision; and impress upon the mind of the traveller a gloom and a melancholy not to be described.

2

The European settlers on the Copper Berg River, in Southern Africa, were accustomed to pass the whole summer, without house or hut, under the branches of quiver trees. The Bedas of Ceylon live in woods3; and their habitations are so concealed with foliage, that it is difficult to discover them. In Turkey, and in modern Greece *, vines wind in trellises round the wells; and there whole families collect themselves, and sit under the shade. The ancient Nasamones, in Cyrenaica, were accustomed to quit the sea-coast in summer, leaving their cattle to wander about at large, and to betake themselves to the interior plains, to sit under the palm-trees and gather their fruits. When a native of Java has a child born, he immediately plants a cocoa-tree; which, adding a circle every year to its bark, indicates the age of the tree, and therefore the

1 Nar. Pers. Trav. Equin. Reg. III. 36.

2 Paterson's Travels in Africa. 4to, p. 58; 1790.

age of the child. The child, in consequence, regards the tree with affection all the rest of its life.

The oak of the north, and the teak of the south, are both one hundred years in coming to perfection. The talipot of Ceylon grows to the height of one hundred feet, and its leaf is so large, that it will cover from sixteen to twenty men like an umbrella. But the largest leaved plant in the world is the troolie of Surinam. It extends on the ground, and has frequently been known to attain a width of three feet, and a length of thirty. The natives cover their houses with it; and it is very durable.

moon.

It is curious to observe, that while the Hytopagi of Ethiopia are said to have had the power of jumping from tree to tree, much after the manner of squirrels, there exists a people, who never even saw a tree, a shrub, or a leaf! These people were discovered by Sir John Ross, in latitudes between 76 and 77. When they first beheld Captain Ross's ships and their crews, they could scarcely be persuaded, that they did not come from the sun or the When they went on board, nothing could equal their surprise at every thing they saw. They believed the ships to be animals. Trees they had never seen; and were, therefore, so entirely ignorant of their properties, that, seeing a mast lie across the deck, they attempted to lift it; and were much surprised that they were unable to do so: having no conception of its having the property of weight. There are but few trees even in Persia. A Persian one day boasting in India of his country, a Hindoo replied, "You, Persians, are continually boasting of your climate; but, after all, you have neither shade to protect you from

the sun in summer, nor fuel to save you from the cold in winter." In Switzerland, groves were once possessed by peculiar tenures; and on the promontory of Kieman, situated on the western part of the lake of Zug, an highly curious tenure still remains: for though the land belongs to Lucerne, the wood belongs to the canton of Zug', and the leaves to that of Sweitz.

Euripides was meditating in a wood, when he was assaulted by hounds, belonging to Archelaus, king of Macedon, which tore him in pieces. The Greek poetess, Eriphanis 2, composed most of her poems among forests, where she delighted to accompany Melampus, the most celebrated hunter of his age. Indeed, the admiration of mankind for woods is of so exalted a nature, that the Abbe Ladovat imagines, that the numerous hamadryads of antiquity were the souls of those, who had been remarkable for their attachment to them.

To the fall of the apple we are indebted for a knowledge of the laws of attraction; as the vibration of a lamp, suspended in the dome of the cathedral, at Pisa, had before suggested the method of measuring time: to the circumstance of Laurentius of Harlem meditating in a wood, we are, also, indebted for the earliest specimens of the art of printing.

The great khan of Tartary had a mount, near Kambalu, called the Green Mount; and Marco Polo 3 relates, that whenever he heard of a fine tree growing any where, he caused it to be transplanted, however large it might be, to this large mount: and one of the succeeding khans,

' Cox, i. 259.

2

Athenæus, lib. xiv.

3 Trav. b. ii. ch. 21.