OF FOREST-TREES.

*7

Pullulat ab radice aliis densifsima sylva :

INTROU.

Ut cerasis, ulmisque: etiam Parnafsia laurusParva sub ingenti matris se subjicit umbra.

Hos natura modos primum dedit: his genus omneSylvarum fruticumque viret, nemorumque sacrorum.Sunt alii, quos ipse via sibi repperit usus.

Some trees their birth to bounteous Nature owe ;For some without the pains of planting grow.

'With Osiers thus the banks of brooks abound,Sprung from the wafry genius of the ground:From the same principles grey Willows come ;Herculean Poplar, and the tender Broom .

But some from seeds inclos’d in earth arise:

For thus the mast-ful Chesnut mates the skies.Hence rise the branching Beech, and vocal OakWhere Jove of old oraculously spoke.

Some from the root a rising wood disclose;

Thus Elms, and thus the salvage Cherry grows.Thus the green Bays, that binds the poet’s brows,Shoots, and is shelter’d by the mother’s boughs.These ways of planting Nature did ordain,

For Trees and Shrubs, and all the Sylvan reign.Others there are, by late experience found :-

Thus we see there are more ways to the wood than one, and Nature hasfurnished us with variety of expedients,

7. And here we might fall into a deep philosophical research, whetherthe Earth itself in some place thereof or other, even without seed, branchor root, &c. would produce every kind of vegetable, as it manifeftly doesdivers sorts of grafs and plants; viz. the Trefoil, or Clover, in succulentland ; in dry ground, May and Ragweeds ; in the very moist, Ros solis,Argentina, Flags, &c.; and in the very barren, Fern, Broom , Heath, &c.So Virgil notes sterile places for the Pitch-tree* 1 we our wet and uligi-

d Virgil, with great judgment, describes sterile grounds, by enumerating the plants thatnaturally grow in such places: There,

-pice® tantum taxique nocentes

Interdum, aut hederas pandunt vestigia nigra.

GEORG.

Mr. Bell in his “ Journey from St. Petersburg to Ispahan” remarks, that those places in

the country of the Tongusi, ou which the Scotch Fir naturally grows, are always fruitful