Identifier: veitchsmanualof00kent (find matches)
Title: Veitch's manual of the coniferae : containing a general review of the order, a synopsis of the species cultivated in Great Britain, their botanical history, economic properties, place and use in arboriculture, etc
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Kent, Adolphus Henry Veitch, James Herbert, 1868-1907 James Veitch & Sons
Subjects: Conifers Conifers
Publisher: Chelsea : J. Veitch
Contributing Library: University of British Columbia Library
Digitizing Sponsor: University of British Columbia Library

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nd which show conclusively that the genus is of astonishing anticpiity and that the first appearance of its ancestral form antedates that of every other existing tree by aons of time. The Ginkgo thus presents to us a glimpse of at least one form of vegetation that tiourislied on the Earth when it was inhabited by unwieldy Icthyosauri, i>;iy;aniic t(jads and monster Deinotheriums ages before J\Ian entered upon his inheritance. If the association of the Ginkgo with the remote Past is of a kind to excite wonder, its recent history is scarcely less a subject for surprise, for the. origin of the existing s(iecies is shrouded 108 GINKGO BILOIiA. in mystery as obscure as that of its remote ancestors. Its lialdtat ispractically unknown; no naturalist can say that he has seen it in awild state, and liypothesis alone suggests that it may possilJy he foundwild in s(jnie unexploied district in eastern Mongolia.* For centuriesit lias l)een preserved alive by the Chinese and Japanese who by ^~\~
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associating it with their religious worsliip and planting it near tlieirshrines and temples, have invested it with a kind of sanctity that hascontributed inniiensely to its preservation amidst a dense populationamong whom the struggle for existence has long been of an acute * A refoiit coiininujieatioii IVoin tlie Vav East i«jiiits to tlic prolmbility n; ihc Ginkf,olieiii Piidciiiic ill Cinca. GINKGO BII.0I5A. 109 kind, ami whose resources of fuel and timber have always heenextremely restrieted. Thus preserxed it stands alone, a perfectstranger, in the midst of recent vegetable forms. The name (Ginkgo was adopted by Linnaeus fioni Kaenipfcr, tkc tirstlunopt-an naturalist wlio saw and descrilied tlie tree; Imt 8ir J. E. Sniitlialtered the name to Salisliuria in compliment to R. A. Salisbuvy, ain-omiuent Britisli liotanist f the early part of the nineteenth century,on the ground that it was eipially uncouth and barbarous. The alterationwas, hciwever, soon afterwards olijected to by the

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