26 Home woods 



conditions are something like those of their natural 

 climate. If we go to the North African mountains we find 

 the Cedars growing where the snow lies until May, our 

 wild flowers and our Thorn and Yew growing with them. 

 The Atlas and Lebanon Cedars, loveliest trees of the 

 northern world, are as hardy as the Pines of Europe 

 if we only plant them rightly. In the same conditions 

 also the Numidian Fir is happy, and quite hardy in our 

 climate. 



Fuel. In the country house, all the cooking and heat- 

 ing might be much better done with wood fuel; the 

 British kitchen range is a costly deception, and, if all our 

 coal-mines failed, every country parish might grow its 

 own fuel and light. Yet it is a common thing to see 

 people bringing coals from Newcastle, and carting it 

 miles from a railway station, whilst abundance of fuel 

 lies rotting in their woodlands. The wealth of Britain 

 in coal has been our loss, in leading us to forget the old 

 ways of cooking and warming. The architect and the 

 housemaid, and the modern grate and chimney, are all 

 against us, and it is not uncommon in a country house 

 to see people shivering round an ugly grate with a coal 

 fire. Our evergreen wood is not such good fuel for the 

 open fire as the native hard woods— Oak, Beech, Ash, 

 or Maple— but for closed ranges and furnaces it makes 

 a good fuel. I have lately been staying in a country 

 house in Hungary, where all the cooking was done with 

 wood, there being thirty-five people to provide for. Even 

 the electricity for fighting the house and offices was gene- 

 rated from the grubbed stubs of Fir trees, which in this 

 country would be left to rot. Every cottage on the estate 

 was warmed with wood only, and with perfect comfort. 



The objection to the greasy coal of northern England, 



