April 6, 191 1 J 



NATURE 



195 



Hart deal with the production of volatile fatty acids and 



( esters in the making of cheddar cheese. The acids found 



were acetic, propionic, butyric, and caproic, but not valeri- 



' anic acid ; none of these seemed to be formed from lactose, 



' although the ethyl alcohol probably was obtained from this 



compound. Mr. McCollum describes how he succeeded in 



keeping rats alive for a considerable time on a ration con- 



\ taining inorganic phosphorus compounds and no purine 



bases ; it was necessary for success that the ration should 



ti<^ varied as widely as possible in order to make it 



latable. Young rats withstood the unpalatability for a 



ig time, and, indeed, were healthy to the end of the 



-periment. He concludes that animals can synthesise 



ir complex phosphorus compounds, including nuclein, 



, irom inorganic compounds, and, further, that they can 



i synthesise the purine bases from some complex present in 



'^iif^ protein molecule. In the last paper of the series 



' ssrs. Hart and Tottingham show the presence of phytin 



seeds of maize, oats, and barley. This substance is a 



complex combination of potassium, magnesium, and 



calcium with phytic acid, C.HgPjO,, which in turn is 



>ken up on hydrolysis to form inosite and phosphoric 



TREE PLANTING IN TOWNS.^ 



T^ 



HE tree, standing singly, collected in masses forming 

 woods, or grown as a beautiful avenue, is a 

 fascinating object of study once the attention has been 

 arrested upon it. Difficult it is to realise that an object 

 ol such size, majesty, and strength as a line old tree 

 represents has sprung from a tiny seed — a seed which if 

 placed in the palm of the hand may, to the non-expert, 

 prove indistinguishable from the seed of a small herb or 

 grass of the field. Yet in the one case the tiny seed con- 

 tains within it the germ which will produce a green monu- 

 ment of 100 to 200 feet or more in height, a living monu- 

 ment which will withstand the storms and changes of 

 centuries, and may witness the downfall and uprise of 

 dynasties and nations. Its seasonal garb does not pass 

 through the kaleidoscopic changes of fashion which man 

 in these later days is heir to. 



The tree has but the four changes of garment which 

 appear regularly with the changing seasons throughout its 

 life, but this raiment has never failed in its attraction for 

 man. Beautiful as are the tender greens of spring, the 

 di-eper, more mature greens of summer, and the brilliant 

 tints of autumn, he who studies trees finds something 

 equally beautiful, even if not more beautiful, in the stern 

 grandeur, with its latent promise of strength, exhibited in 

 winter. 



The tree has had a greater influence in the training an*d 

 civilisation of mankind than is perhaps generally realised, 

 certainly more than is realised by the man of the city and 

 town. Long centuries ago the greater portion of the land 

 of the globe was covered by vast primaeval forests in which 

 man lived a primitive existence, and against which he 

 waged an unequal war. But he was dependent upon the 

 forest for the greater part of his means of subsistence, 

 whilst his house, furniture, cooking utensils, such as they 

 were, and implements, offensive, defensive, and cultural, 

 were all fashioned from the materials of the forest. 



As man increased in number and became more civilised, 

 h cleared larger and larger areas of the tree growth, and 

 now took to living outside, but still in the neighbourhood 

 of, the forest. Still he depended upon the forest for most of 

 the necessaries of life, from the materials for constructing 

 his house down to a chief portion of his daily food. 



It was only with the great increase in number of man- 

 kind and with his concentration in certain localities, usually 

 the fertile lowlands from which the forests had been 

 cleared, that these sections of the human race began to 

 depend less and less on the forest as one of the chief staffs 

 of life. 



But we see that the instinct of man in the earlier days 

 in the history of the world was to look to the forest as 

 nature's great storehouse from which he could obtain the 

 necessities of his daily life. It is so with the nomadic 



' Paper read at the Town Planning Kyhibiiion in the Royal Academy 

 Puildinjf;, Edinburgh, March 23, by E. P. Stebbing, lecturer in Forestry, 

 Uniicrsity of Edinburgh. 



NO. 2162, VOL. 86] 



races of the world at the present day. 1 wish to make 

 this point, as it explains, I think, the inherent love of 

 trees which lies in the nature of each one of us, though in 

 the city-bred man it may to some extent remain dormant. 



It explains another point, on which I propose to briefly 

 dwell, the instinct of man, if left to himself in a bare, 

 treeless region to plant trees or tree growth, or bushes 

 even, to brighten the monotony of his otherwise dreary 

 surroundings. For those of us who have experienced 

 nature in its awesome loneliness in the absence of tree 

 growth of any kind, know full well how appallingly 

 depressing it can become. 



In such localities man, if left to himself, will, I say,, 

 start planting trees, and will take extraordinary trouble 

 to make them grow. Some years ago I was deputed by 

 the Government of India to visit Quetta, the beautiful 

 capital of Baluchistan — that rugged province situated in the 

 far north-west of India on the frontier of Afghanistan and 

 Persia, Quetta occupies the central Highland of Balu- 

 chistan, and is a point of considerable military strategic 

 importance. It is situated at about 5500 feet, and is 

 surrounded by great barren peaks ranging up to 11,700 

 feet. The railway climbs to it through a dreary rugged 

 waste of rock and sand, with here and there little villages 

 embosomed in trees and surrounded with small areas of 

 crops. It is a wild country, and the history of Quetta 

 fully illustrates my point that man in such a country will 

 plant trees for dear life. 



The main station of Quetta was formed after Lord 

 Roberts's march to Kandahar. At the time the first 

 houses were built, save for the fact that the villages around 

 contained some poplars and willows and fruit trees, the 

 site consisted of a barren plain. The planting was first 

 started in 1878 by Mr. Bruce. After the evacuation of 

 Kandahar, the work was taken up mainly by Mr. (now 

 Sir Hugh) Barnes, General Sir Stanley Edwardes, who 

 was in command of the troops, Colonel Gainsford, and 

 Mr. Watson, the forest officer. A tree committee was 

 formed, and large nurseries established. The trees were 

 obtained from Kandahar, a beginning being made in the 

 winter of 1881— 2, when some 60,000 cuttings or slips of 

 the chenar or plane tree, poplar and willows, were brought 

 on camels from Kandahar and planted out along the road- 

 sides and in the gardens. The planes were put on the 

 main road, the Lytton Road. They form a magnificent 

 avenue, now thirty years old, which gives a most grateful 

 shade in summer, considerably lowering the temperature. 

 The growth of the trees was wonderfully rapid, irrigation 

 being then, as now, employed to water them ; for all the 

 water in the country is brought in channels from the 

 sources of the springs, its value being fully understood by 

 the inhabitants, who show great ingenuity in constructing 

 these water channels. Other roads were lined with poplars 

 or willows, and if a mistake was made it was in planting 

 the trees too close, and in planting the avenues on any 

 one road of one species of tree only ; and this mistake 

 had to be paid for later on somewhat dearly, to which 

 allusion may be made. The trees were attacked by a 

 cerambyx beetle pest {.■Eolesthes sarta) the grubs of which 

 fed in the green inner bark — the growing layer — of the 

 trees, and resulted in numbers of the poplars and willows 

 having to be cut out and burnt. 



Not only in Quetta, but also in all the cantonments 

 throughout Baluchistan, the planting of trees forms one 

 of the chief recreations of the British community, so great 

 is the distaste of mankind, accustomed and used to tree 

 and plant growth, to exist without it. The whole of the 

 work is carried out by the political and military officers 

 stationed in that portion of the country, few if any of 

 whom had, before reaching the country, any planting 

 knowledge, and many of whom had confessedly previously 

 taken but little interest in the growth of trees. Amongst 

 the most enthusiastic of the planting community at the 

 time of my visit was General Sir Henry Smith-Dorrien, 

 now commanding at .-Mdcrshot, but then commanding the 

 Quetta division, and he attacked and wiped out the 

 " borer," as they called the beetle pest, in his canton- 

 ments with as much keenness as he planted trees. 



I have alluded to the fact that the major portion of the 

 land surface of the globe was formerly clothed with vast 

 primaeval forests. 



In the ojx^ning phase*; of his connection with the forest 



