"For the origin of the mysterious reverence with which certain trees and flowers were anciently regarded, and of tree 'worship,' properly so called, we must go back to that primæval period into which comparative mythology has of late afforded us such remarkable glimpses; when the earth to its early inhabitants seemed 'apparelled in celestial light,' but when every part of creation seemed to be endowed with a strange and conscious vitality. When rocks and mountains, the most apparently lifeless and unchanging of the world's features, were thus regarded and were personified in common language, it would have been wonderful if the more life-like plains--the great rivers that fertilised, and the trees with their changing growth and waving branches that clothed them--should have been disregarded and unhonoured. Accordingly sacred ruins and sacred trees appear in the very earliest mythologies which have been recovered, and linger amongst the last vestiges of heathenism long after the advent of a purer creed. Either as direct objects of worship, or as forming the temple under whose solemn shadow other and remoter deities might be adored, there is no part of the world in which trees have not been regarded with especial reverence:-- 'In such green palaces the first kings reigned; Slept in their shade, and angels entertained. With such cold counsellors they did advise, And by frequenting sacred shades, grew wise.' Paradise itself, says Evelyn, was but a kind of "nemorous temple or sacred grove," planted by God himself, and given to man; and he goes on to suggest that the groves which the patriarchs are recorded to have planted in different parts of Palestine, may have been memorials of that first tree-shaded paradise from which Adam was expelled.