a matter of convenience, genera and species could be taken up in whatever order our knowledge best enabled us to deal with them. I am sure that if we had not so acted and had tried to do the really difficult genera at the beginning, the value of the book would have been vastly diminished, whilst such a full index as was published with the last part makes the reader who wishes to find a particular tree quite independent of the order in which they were published.
In publishing work of this magnitude privately, a great deal depends on the printer, and I was fortunate enough to full into the hands of Messrs. R. and R. Clark of Edinburgh, with whom I had the pleasantest relations throughout, and who took an unusual amount of pains in advising me about various little details, and were most generous with their type, which enabled me to keep proofs standing for a much longer time than usual, and then revise, add and polish a proof in a way which I can never do so well in manuscript. Their compositors and reader were extremely efficient, and as anyone knows who has had experience of printing a large number of references to scientific works in many languages, and making a great number of footnotes fit in their proper pages, this sort of work cannot be entrusted to any but highly skilled men. I was much indebted on one occasion to a Highlander in Messrs. Clark’s employ who was a Gaelic scholar, and who called my attention to what he believed to be a mistake in the Gaelic name of a tree. I replied that we had given it on the authority of a distinguished Gaelic scholar in Ireland. He main¬ tained his objection that the name was not an original Gaelic word but; one that had probably been coined for a tree not truly indigenous in either Scotland or Ireland. I suggested that the Professor of Gaelic in the University of Edinburgh would be the best person to consult on the matter. So we went off then and there to see him, and after consulting the best dictionaries the professor supported the opinion of the printer, which to my mind is the best evidence that the tree is introduced and not native (cf. Trees of Great Britain , vol. i., p. 12, note 1).
When, after four years’ work, we had at last got Volume I. ready to publish, my friend Sir Joseph Hooker, then in his ninetieth year, asked me to show him some of the proofs, and I took down the first article in print to his house at Sunningdale. After lunch he pushed up his spectacles on to his forehead and read through the twenty-eight pages without a remark. When he had finished he congratulated me and said that he should not have thought it possible to say so much that was new and interesting to him about so common and well known a tree as the Beech. He called my attention to the misspelling of Lyell’s name in a footnote, and also to a supposed error in the county to which I had assigned a well-known place, but we found on referring to a large-scale map that the place in question was on the border of two counties and that I was correct in this case, I mention this only to show the remarkable keenness of intellect which Sir Joseph retained almost to the end of one of the most active and industrious lives on record.
Proof reading is a work which requires the very closest attention, and though I am told that the errata in our book are unusually few and un¬ important, yet however many times one goes over the proofs, it is almost
