2-982-255 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Boxwood Forest on the Shores of the Black Sea, 1858. 'Our Illustration represents one of the numerous boxwood forests on the shore of the Black Sea, in the province of Anatolia, Turkey in Asia. The boxwood which is used for the Engravings in this Journal is almost entirely derived from Turkey (although it is found in both Corsica and Sardinia), and it is of that description known botanically as the buxus sempervirens. The European wood (Buxus Calearica) is proved to be of an inferior quality. It is brought from Italy and Portugal. The Turkish box is exported from Smyrna or Constantinople in logs varying in size from three to six feet in length, by three inches to one foot in diameter. It is, from the equality of its texture, the only serviceable wood for the purposes of an engraver. Perhaps the most familiar example of the growing buxus sempervirens tree in England is at Box-hill, near Dorking, in Surrey. The wood is, however, very much smaller and inferior to that of Turkey in Asia. In 1815 the box-trees cut down at Box-hill produced more than £10,000'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.