Chap. IX.] AVENUES AND HOULEVAllDS. l,'}'.! 



as a new road or boulevard is made in Paris, it is planted with 

 trees ; and every one of the millions is as carefully trained and 

 protected as a pet tree in an English park. 



To plant trees so closely as those on the boulevards helps to 

 provide the streets with some shade almost directly ; and as the 

 trees are usually trained specially for boulevard-planting, some 

 little effect is obtained at once ; but there can be no doubt that 

 it is too close a system of planting, as the trees cannot grow 

 sufficiently when so much crowded. A better way would be to 

 place them further apart, and to plant alternately with the per- 

 manent trees some kind that grows very rapidly when young. 

 This would help to furnish the avenue until the trees intended to 

 permanently adorn it have been established a few years. As soon 

 as those of the free-growing, nursing kind become large enough to 

 deprive their neighbours of light, they might be cut in vigorously, 

 and finally removed altogether. Sometimes double ranks of trees 

 are planted, but this is only wise where the boulevards are very 

 wide. It is occasionally practised in avenues — like some of those 

 that radiate from the Arc de Triomphe ; but usually it has the 

 effect of darkening the houses too much. They should however 

 be planted wherever, as is often the case in the outer boulevards, 

 there is abundant room for a double or even treble line of trees to 

 develop without disagreeably shading the houses. The trees are 

 usually placed within three and a half or four feet of the edge of 

 the footway, but there can be little doubt that it would be a better 

 plan to keep them a few feet further from the road, and this 

 would admit of giving them a larger body of soil, of which 

 generally they receive too little in Paris. 



With the boulevards one naturally associates the quays, planted 

 in every available spot with trees, and in Paris the public swim- 

 ming-baths are all on the silent boulevaid. However, the Seine 

 at Paris is not a noble river, and the ugliest things to be seen 

 from its banks in summer are the floating baths, which in some 

 l)laces half cover its surface. But public bathing is a matter of 

 the highest importance, and it is perhaps better to have floating 

 baths on the river than tolerate the exhibition which may be 

 witnessed on the Serpentine on any fine summer evening. 

 Whatever may be thought upon this point, it is certain that 

 there is no question connected with the healthful exercise of 



