1 5 8 National and public parks and tree planting 



areas of natural beauty in its moors and mountain 

 lands in the north and its downs in the south, which 

 might easily be given to this national object. 



One of the greatest gains from national parks would 

 be in the opportunity they might afford for planting 

 our native trees in bold masses and forests. These 

 would be massed according to their needs as regards 

 soil and elevation, without any setting out or prim 

 fencing, or any like things usually thought necessary to 

 artificial planting, needless in a national park. In all the 

 more fertile parts and by streams and in valleys these 

 trees would serve the two purposes of showing their 

 natural form and values and of giving a home to wood- 

 land creatures. 



The only difficulty would be to prevent these great 

 parks from becoming places of public resort merely, 

 which would destroy all the quiet for the creatures we 

 would encourage in them. This could be avoided by 

 selecting spots difficult of access and remote from the 

 busy centres, the woods to be closed at seasons of nest- 

 ing and breeding, and the merely curious excluded alto- 

 gether. Anything like formal roads and paths would 

 be avoided, and artists and students might then, under 

 regulation, be allowed access to them. Indeed, the value 

 of such places might almost be considered in relation 

 to their value for artists, as in a thickly peopled country 

 like ours the cultivated and residential land is likely to 

 become more and more inaccessible to them. 



In the Nineteenth Century ', in his plea for a national 

 park for Scotland, Mr. Charles Stewart enumerated the 

 purposes of such parks as follows : 



(i) The preservation in its wild state of a large tract of 

 country possessing natural beauty, varied in its character and 



