196 NATURE NEAR LONDON, 



TREES ABOUT TOWN. 



Just outside London there is a circle of fine, large 

 houses, each standing in its own grounds, highly 

 rented, and furnished with every convenience money 

 can supply. If any one will look at the trees and 

 shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house, 

 chosen at random for an example, and make a list of 

 them, he may then go round the entire circumference 

 of Greater London, mile after mile, many days* 

 journey, and find the list ceaselessly repeated. 



There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, arau- 

 c arias, laurels, planes, beds of rhododendrons, and so 

 on. There are various other foreign shrubs and trees 

 whose names have not become famihar, and then the 

 next grounds contain exactly the same, somewhat 

 differently arranged. Had they all been planted by 

 Act of Parliament, the result could scarcely have been 

 more uniform. 



If, again, search were made in these enclosures for 

 English trees and English shrubs, it would be found 

 that none have been introduoed. The English trees, 

 timber trees, that are there, grew before the house 

 was built ; for the rest, the products of English woods 



