“The following species from the flora known to Theophrastus have either entirely disappeared from Greece, or have emigrated from the habitations which he assigns to them, and withdrawn into the moister climate of more northerly regions; the varieties commonly known to the ancients of the Linden; the Yew, that child of damp and shady hillsides, of which rare and dwarfed specimens only are now to be found on the highest mountains; the Hornbeam, the Beech, and Alder of Homer; and, with scanty exceptions, the ‘spear-furnishing’ Cornel and the tall Ash. Instead of these, another class of plants has conquered for itself greater space in the vegetable realm—thick-leaved, hard-leaved, down-covered, thorny and prickly bushes, evergreen for the most part, and adding, by their rich flowers, great beauty to the spring. This vegetation, analogous to that of the American savannas and Asiatic steppes, has now replaced the ancient flowery meadows, resembling those of middle Europe, with wastes of heath and pines, carob-trees and grey oleasters. Together with these we have the various kinds of arbutus, myrtle, oleander, philyreæ, pistachios, kermes-oaks, rosemary, thyme, and the flora of dry mountain regions in general.” Let us now see how far the historical indications furnished by the Pompeian relics corroborate what has been already said respecting this “intrusion of the climate of the South,” as Fraas terms it, into the regions north of the Mediterranean. In order to ascertain the plants known to the citizens of Pompeii, says Schouw, two records remain to us—namely, the pictures discovered in its ruins, and the remnants of plants themselves. But, he adds, the use of the first requires some care:—“Many representations of plants are naturally so little precise that their particular species cannot be ascertained, as would be the case in modern pictures of the same kind. And, if the plant be recognisable, it does not follow as certain that it was known at Pompeii, for the plants of foreign countries are also occasionally represented. Thus the Nile-nature is often delineated—marshy landscapes, with the lotus and the _nelumbium_, the hippopotamus, ichneumon, flocks of geese, and date-palms at the water’s edge; as, for instance, in the lower rim of the famous mosaic supposed to represent Alexander and Darius. Frequently, also, the representations are fanciful—for instance, a laurel growing out of a date-palm, and even appearing to rise out of it as a shoot from the same root—a physiological impossibility, unless, perhaps, it has reference to that strange practice of the ancients—the planting of different kinds so close to each other that they might appear to the eye connected.”