Vegetation is the garb of nature; and no description of any region can pretend to completeness till the trees—the most conspicuous part of the vegetation—have been brought into view. In Egypt as each specimen of the few species of trees commonly met with (the species may be counted on the fingers of one hand) must be carefully looked after to be kept alive, every particular tree comes to be regarded as beautiful, and valuable. The knowledge the traveller has of this care and regard, which have been bestowed upon them, enhances the interest with which he beholds them. Besides, the trees of Egypt are entitled to a place in any description of the country, for the additional reason, that on its level plain they are the most marked and pleasing objects on which the eye rests. A work, therefore, that aims at giving anything like a picture of Egypt, must bring out, with some little distinctive prominency, the characteristics of each species.

Among the trees of Egypt, the first place is held by the palm. On landing at Alexandria you find it around the city in abundance, and throughout the country you are never long out of sight of it. It is seen to most advantage from the river against the sky. It appears most in place when, in sufficient numbers to form a grove, it overshadows some river-side village. You there look upon it as the beneficent friend and coadjutor of the poor villagers. You know that it gives them much they could not get elsewhere, and which they could ill spare—shade, boxes, baskets, cordage, thatch, timber, and the chief of their humble luxuries, in return for the protection and water they have given to it. We often hear it spoken of as the queen of the vegetable world. I had rather say that it is a form of grace, and beauty, of which the eye never tires.

The tree usually employed in forming avenues, where shade is the first object, is the broad-podded acacia. The distinguishing feature in this is the largeness and abundance of its singularly dark green leaves. Its foliage, indeed, is so dense, that no ray of sunlight can penetrate through it. The effect is very striking. In one of these avenues, that has been well kept, you will find yourself in a cool gloom, both the coolness, and the gloom, being such that you cannot but feel them, while you see the sun blazing outside. The road from Boulak to the Pyramids of Gizeh is planted the whole way with these trees. For the first two or three miles they are of some age, and, having now met overhead above the road, the shelter, even at mid-day, is complete. For the rest of the way the trees are not older than the Prince of Wales’s visit, they having been planted along the sides of the road that was on that occasion made to do him honour, in Eastern fashion. No tree more easily establishes itself, or grows more rapidly, if sufficiently watered. All that is required is to cut off a limb, no matter how large, or from how old a tree, and to set it in the ground. If it be supplied with water it grows without fail. This acacia is the lebekh of the natives.

Another tree used in avenues, and which grows to a greater height and with larger limbs than the lebekh, is the Egyptian sycamore. It is a species of the Indian fig. The largeness of its limbs enables you to see the whole of its skeleton. The skeleton of the lebekh is concealed by the multiplicity of its branches, and the density of its foliage. There is a fine specimen of this sycamore in the first Nubian village, on the way from Assouan to Philæ, and another equally good on the bank of the river just opposite Philæ. Trees of this kind have more of the appearance of age than others in Egypt. Their bark is of a whitish colour, and their large branches are covered with little leafless spur-like twigs, of a dingy black, on which are produced their round green fruit, about as big as bantams’ eggs. These spur-like processes on the branches are, I suppose, the homologues of the descending aërial roots of its congener, the banyan-tree of India, of which latter also I saw one or two good specimens in gardens in Egypt. It was from the imperishable wood of the sycamore that the ancient Egyptians made their mummy cases. The fine old avenue from Cairo to Shoobra, three miles in length, is composed of generally good specimens of this tree, intermingled with the acacia, lebekh, and here and there a few tamarisks.

The tree which approaches nearest to the ability to support itself in Egypt, without man’s aid, is the tamarisk. It is a tree that drinks very little, and takes a great deal of killing. You see it growing as a stunted shrub in the nitre-encrusted depressions of the desert in the neighbourhood of Ismailia, and elsewhere, where it can only very occasionally be refreshed by a stray shower. Wherever it can get the little moisture, with which it is satisfied, it becomes a graceful tree.

The thorny small-leaved acacia gives but little shade. It produces a small yellow flower, which is a complete globe, and has a sweet scent. It is in flower at Christmas. If this is the acanthus of Herodotus, its wood must have been largely used when he was in Egypt for the construction of the river boats, which were often of very great capacity.

The dôm palm is occasionally seen in Upper Egypt. The first I fell in with was at Miniéh. That, I believe, is the most northerly point at which it is found. Its peculiarity is that, when the stem has reached a few feet above the ground, it bifurcates. It then has two stems and two heads. When these two stems have grown out to the length of a few feet they, too, each of them, bifurcate, following the example of the parent stem. There are now four stems with heads. Another repetition of the process gives eight, and so on. In fact, it is a branching palm, and every branch is a complete palm-tree. The whole is a cluster of palm-trees on one stock.

These are all the trees one notices in travelling through the country. The list is soon run through, but I saw that an attempt was being made to add to the list. In the neighbourhood of the Viceroy’s palaces I found two species of Australian eucalyptus. They appeared to approve of the soil and climate, and gave promise of soon becoming fine trees. They do well at Nice, and will probably do better in Egypt.

Every one of the trees I have mentioned remains, in Egypt, in full foliage throughout the winter.