4 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



Humans speak of fleeing city streets and getting 

 out into the woods. If they but realised it, they 

 are merely journeying from one city to a better one 

 from man's poor imitation to nature's splendid 

 consummation. We agree with Emerson that "in 

 the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plan- 

 tations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a 

 perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not 

 how he should tire of them in a thousand years." 



Tree cities! This idea is something more than 

 a pretty analogy. Let us mount above some great 

 forest by aeroplane and observe its great and sali- 

 ent features en masse. The streets, alas, are for 

 the most part hidden, but we know that they are 

 there great, cathedral passageways, high-flung 

 and canopied, protected alike from browning sun 

 and threatening shower. 



As we soar high and free on the wings of man's 

 genius, we recognise various quarters of this city 

 of leafy billows sections of light green; regions 

 close-knit and impenetrable ; regions freer and more 

 open all telling of the wide-spreading mansions 

 and the close-packed tenements of a cosmopolitan 

 origin. Here and there are rocky open places, as 

 if the trees too required their breathing spaces in 

 which to stretch their knotted and restricted limbs. 

 Sometimes a lonely sycamore or plane tree stands 



