Note 254 — Chapter III · (continued 3)

Since writing this paragraph, I have fallen upon—and that in a Spanish author—one of those odd coincidences of thought which every man of miscellaneous reading so often meets with. Antonio Ponz (Viage de España, i, prólogo, p. lxiii), says: "Nor would this be so great an evil, were not some of them declaimers against trees, thereby proclaiming themselves, in some sort, enemies of the works of God, who gave us the leafy abode of Paradise to dwell in, where we should be even now sojourning, but for the first sin, which expelled us from it."

I do not know at what period the two Castiles were bared of their woods, but the Spaniard's proverbial "hatred of a tree" is of long standing. Herrera vigorously combats this foolish prejudice; and Ponz, in the prologue to the ninth volume of his journey, says that many carried it so far as wantonly to destroy the shade and ornamental trees planted by the municipal authorities. "Trees," they contended, and still believe, "breed birds, and birds eat up the grain." Our author argues against the supposition of the "breeding of birds by trees," which, he says, is as absurd as to believe that an elm tree can yield pears; and he charitably suggests that the expression is, perhaps, a manière de dire, a popular phrase, signifying simply that trees harbor birds.