Jacob George Strutt, Sylva Britannica, or Portraits of Forest Trees, Distinguished for their Antiquity, Magnitude, or Beauty (London: Longman, Rees, O

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2021-06-15 21:30:09

Jacob George Strutt, Sylva Britannica, or Portraits of Forest Trees, Distinguished for their Antiquity, Magnitude, or Beauty (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1830).

In Sylva Britannica, or Portraits of Forest Trees, Joseph George Strutt (1784–1867) pictures fifty special British trees in etchings and words. Beneath gnarled oaks and chestnuts deer wander, horses mosey, and goats snooze. A pig nuzzles a root, a peacock perches on a branch, a cat ponders a picnic basket. Two travellers look up in quiet awe, a young lad fools with his dog, a reclining shepherd admires his flock. This is the country life glorified and simplified. If the characters could speak one would probably be quoting Duke Senior in As You Like It: “And this our life, exempt from public haunt, / finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

Strutt chooses tree species long associated with Britain — oaks, elms, yews, ash — as well as a few exotic recent arrivals like cedar and oriental plane. His descriptions owe a debt to John Evelyn, author of the first thorough study of British trees, Sylva (1664), which mixed classical mythology, rhapsodic praise, and practical forestry advice — all in an effort to encourage tree planting. Strutt is more focused on the poetic side of things but nonetheless shares Evelyn’s patriotism and conception of the social value of trees:

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