CHAPTER XVI. 



AFFORESTATION. 



There was a time when every Englishman 

 not only regarded his country symbolically as 

 a heart of oak, but treasured the timber of his 

 country as a woman treasures her chastity. 

 To despoil our woods was to despoil our 

 country. 



It is in his relationship to timber that Dr. 

 A. R. Wallace particularly differentiates man 

 from the rest of the animal world : " Taking 

 first the innumerable kinds of wood whose 

 qualities of strength, lightness, ease of cutting 

 and planing, sometimes of surface, beauty, and 

 durability are so exactly suited to the needs 

 of civilised man that it is almost doubtful if 

 he could have reached civilisation without 

 them. . . . 



" Let us remember that before the dawn of 



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