PERIODICAL LITERATURE 



FOREST GEOGRAPHY AND DESCRIPTION 



In the course of an article in the Sunday 



The Devastation Pictorial upon "Changes in the Countryside.'' 



of War Mr. Chedwoith Paine shows how the war has 



ahered rural Britain. Outwardly the principal 



change, he says, in the appearance of the countryside is due to the 



immense felling of timber, which began during the war, and is till 



continuing. You may see traces of it anywhere between the Cromarty 



Firth and North Devon. We have probably only got one-fourth of 



the salable timber we possessed in l!il-t. 



The country is being denuded of "high forest timber, and only 

 private enterprise in forestry can save us from a timber famine when 

 the next emergency arises. The small sum allotted to the new For- 

 estry Commission is an item of Government expenditure I do not 

 grudge, but the commission's voice is still too weak to make the nation 

 understand that we need an intelligible forest policy. The new 

 farmer-owners are fast destroying the fine hedgerow timber and the 

 copses on their land. They do it in order to cultivate their fields to 

 the last yard. I know many a lane which was once a leafy grove 

 where not a tree is left, and the stimips have been blown out. Pro- 

 ductivity is more important than scenery, and we must not complain, 

 but little is being done to make good the loss of the small woodlands 

 and the hedgerow timber. 



"I fear the time is coming when the hedges, the most distinctive 

 feature of English scenery, may be wiped out also. Already I have 

 seen several areas where the hedges have been destroyed. England 

 was hedgeless up to the fourteenth century, for hedges were first 

 planted in consequence of the change of land tenure at the time of the 

 Black Death. After six centuries the hedges are being doomed by the 

 new farming." 



The Timber Trades Journal. May 14, 1921, page 1312. 

 694 



