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, araucarias, 

 laurels, planes, beds of rhododendrons, and so on. 

 There are various other foreign shrubs and trees whose 

 names have not become familiar, and then the next 

 grounds contain exactly the same, somewhat differently 

 arranged. Had they all been planted by Act of Par- 

 liament, 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 introduced. The English trees, timber 

 trees, that are there, grew before the house was built ; 

 for the rest, the products of English woods and hedgerows 

 have been carefully excluded. The law is, "Plant 

 planes, laurels, and rhododendrons ; root up everything 

 natural to this country." 



To those who have any affection for our own wood- 



