1902 The Establishment of an Arbor Day 167 



All those, therefore, — and they are many, — who wish to 

 carry out this excellent idea of a Tree Day, must consider 

 how this can be done by an association such as the Society 

 for the Protection of Birds without incurring the risk of a 

 fiasco similar to that of the Bird Protection Acts. 



It must be remembered, in the first place, that no satis- 

 factory planting of trees, or in fact any real planting of trees 

 at all, can be carried out except by the consent and under 

 the auspices of the large landowners, or the District and 

 other councils. 



Let us take the latter first. In rural districts the Councils 

 have a perfect mania for lopping trees and grubbing up or 

 cutting severely back all the beautiful old hedges which 

 form the chief ornament of our country scenery, and con- 

 stitute the larger part of the shelter available for birds in 

 such comparatively woodless districts as the Midlands. All 

 this vandalism is perpetrated on the ground of utility. 

 Farmers are taught that tall hedges injure the crops, 

 whereas in fact they benefit and nurse them. Roads are 

 supposed to deteriorate because the hedges prevent moisture 

 from drying off them. Meanwhile many parts of England, 

 more especially the Midlands, suffer year after year from 

 severe droughts. In Germany the State insists upon apple, 

 plum, and pear trees being planted along the highways, 

 affirming that the produce from these goes far to maintain 

 the roads in repair. Some districts sigh, and sigh in vain, 

 for the cool sheltered lanes of Surrey and Devonshire, and 

 other counties, where a more intelligent view is taken of 

 rural matters. Apart from the beauty of hedges and hedge- 

 row trees, they are a great comfort in hot weather for their 

 shade and in bleak weather for their shelter. 



The above being the attitude of the County and District 

 Councils, we may be prepared to find that if an Arbor 

 Day be established, they will, at all events at first, be op- 

 posed to it. 



Since the Commons' Enclosure Act in the earlier part of 

 the nineteenth century, which followed the maxim of giv- 

 mg to the rich who had and taking from the poor even 

 the little they might have claimed to have, there is no 

 common land available in most places for the purpose of 



