196 



NATURE 



r April fi. to 1 1 



man wagfd a puny and incfTectivc war against the relent- 

 less growth of the forest, and had as much as he could do 

 to keep a small clearing round his abode, and in many 

 cases this was not attempted. Regions in the tropical 

 world exist at the present day where this unequal and 

 never-ending strife between man and the luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion of the forest still goes on, usually in favour of the 

 forest. With increase of numbers, permanent clearings 

 came into being, but the whole of the materials for hous<;- 

 building, &c., came from the forest. At the present day 

 the aborigines of Central India and the Assam and North 

 Burma Hills, as is the case with aborigines in other parts 

 of the world, construct their habitations of wood, grass, 

 and leaves ; their household crockery and glass consists of 

 gourds, with lengths of bamboo for the wineglasses, whilst 

 a considerable portion of their food consists of edible fruits 

 and roots and leaves and shoots of forest trees, and when 

 they can procure it, meat from the wild animals of the 

 same forest. 



But man, with increased numbers and civilisation, began 

 a ruthless war against the forest, and is still carrying it 

 on in America, Canada, and elsewhere, with the result 

 which now faces us. In Great Britain, once covered with 

 forests, we have no forests at all and few woods of any 

 size, and are at the present moment entirely dependent on 

 our timber, &c., supplies being brought to us from outside. 

 And the sources of this supply are diminishing, and are 

 also being yearly indented on to a greater extent by other 

 countries. 



But long before the awakening as to the importance of 

 forests commenced in Europe — a matter of a century or 

 two only — man, the man in the rapidly growing cities and 

 towns, had realised the importance of the tree and the 

 place the tree held in his existence. His primitive instincts, 

 laid to rest whilst engaged in ruthlessly exterminating his 

 friend, were aroused into an active repentance when he 

 no longer had that friend at his door and could no longer 

 watch it garb itself in its brilliant seasonal changes of 

 raiment, and no longer had its protection for himself and 

 his animals against cold or fierce winds, a hot sun, &c. 

 He then commenced, after the fashion of man, energetic- 

 ally, but more or less spasmodically, to endeavour to repair 

 the effect of his own destructiveness. To his surprise, 

 however, he found it was by no means so easy to replace 

 the trees on spots from which he had ruthlessly cut them. 

 Nature's balance had been unduly interfered with ; the 

 rich store of good soil built up through the ages in her 

 own storehouses of the past had been wastefuUy dissipated, 

 and whereas she herself never asked the trees to grow on 

 bed-rock, man did. 



Also, as time went on, the atmosphere, especially in the 

 larger cities and commercial centres, became polluted and 

 vitiated with smoke and acids, and man, having no time 

 or wish to study the methods by which nature reclothes 

 the soil when left to herself after he had passed by, gave 

 up his attempts to maintain trees near or within the areas, 

 rapidly increasing in density of population, in which he 

 worked and lived. 



We thus arrive at another stage in the history of man 

 and the tree. The city increased in size ; the population 

 doubled, trebled, and quadrupled itself ; the single-room 

 tenement, as we were shown by Lord Pcntland the other 

 day, made its appearance and came to stay ; the streets 

 became narrower, the houses higher, and the tree itself 

 disappeared. If we look at the large densely populated 

 capitals of Europe and the great commercial centres of 

 the present day, we find in both that in the parts occupied 

 by the poor classes and workers the significance of the tree 

 as the close neighbour and companion of man throughout 

 a considerable portion of his existence on the globe has 

 been forgotten or lost to view. But the instinct is there, 

 deep implanted in the heart of each one. Even to the born 

 and bred city child, the descendant of several generations 

 of town-bred men, the craving for a sight of a green field 

 or of a wood comes dimly at times. Probably most of us 

 who are acquainted with great cities have come across 

 instances of such. It was my fortune once to see a little 

 youngster from the slums of London taken into a Kentish 

 hop-field. He came from one of the worst parts of the 

 great city, and in all his little life had onlv seen a grimv 

 plane tree and a dark, sooty green grass plot. In the 

 train, so soon as the open country had been reached, he 



ri-mained speechless. Once in uk' ik.; 

 covered his voice, and went wild with 



delight. It was very easy to see man'i . : 



for wild nature and nature's growth there. 1 

 apparent is it in most of us born and bred in < 

 countries when we come face to face for the first i. 

 with a tropical forest. Instincts and thoughts to whi 

 we fail to give expression surge up within us as we 1 

 that once again wc have come into contact with : 

 original homes of our ancestors; and the feelings, m. 

 you, which are aroused by such a contact, which w- 

 aroused in that little London lad in the hop-garden, ;. 

 the very ones which it- is to the interest of mankind t». 

 keep alive and stimulate. 



Mankind does not seem to improve with hi^ 

 ing habit of congregating in dense masses i: 

 and towns. He appears, somehow, to lose sfp" • 

 that freshness and breeziness which we as 

 the mountain top and find in the dweller on t 

 top. In our more spacious, if less civilised and cu 

 vated, days, we lived in closer touch with nature, ;, 

 there are those who say that in many ways we wer^ 

 men for the contact. But the closer life in cities ; 

 something which, as I think, is even worse for 

 nature than this. W^e are losing some of t!: 

 instincts, and certainly our finer senses of sight ai 

 ing, and even of smell. I do not speak from any 

 knowledge of the subject, but simply from j 

 observations made during a number of years' contact a 

 the folk of the jungles and mountainous regions of Im! 

 They can give us points and a beating in all of the l.i>v 

 three ; and yet there is no reason to suppose that our 

 ancestors — the ancient Britons, who dressed in blue paint — 

 were not possessed of these finer senses and were not the 

 equal, in these respects, of the present-day aborigine. 



Of course, I do not wish to be understood as saying 

 that the town- and city-bred man can hope to remain the 

 equal of the countryman in his knowledge of nature or 

 in those senses which demand to be constantly used to 

 be kept in high order. But my point is that a good deal 

 more might and should be done to help the dweller in the 

 densely populated portions of the great cities and com- 

 mercial centres to keep to some extent in touch with 

 nature. He should be able to see and live with trees, and 

 to see daily, not only on holidays or at the expense of a 

 long walk, which he will not take, trees and areas of 

 green grass and flowers. W^e who live in the open air and 

 habitually enjoy such sights, and those who spend several 

 weeks or months in the year annually in the country, find 

 it diflRcult to picture the mind of a child who has never 

 seen a field of corn and red poppies rippling under the soft 

 summer wind, or the waving tops of a green forest, or 

 heard the soughing of the breeze in a pine wood ; and yet 

 there are probably hundreds and thousands such in these 

 islands. 



Now it should be quite possible for the rulers of every 

 large city and town to see that open spaces are provided 

 for the recreation of the inhabitants. Much has and is 

 being done in this respect, and this exhibition is a witness 

 to all it is hoped to do in the future. But I am not con- 

 cerned here with the provision of the open spaces, but, 

 with tree planting and the beautifying, not only of th© 

 open spaces, a comparatively easy matter, but of the streets 

 and their neighbourhood. When we talk of trees ii 

 streets, the usual idea is, I think, an avenue. Those wh > 

 have seen the beautiful lime avenue at Trinity College \ 

 Oxford, know what a beautiful thing it is. An avenue i- 

 a very beautiful thing. But there are many streets far 

 too narrow to take an avenue, and yet it is quite possible 

 that there may be a situation at one or both ends where 

 a tree or a clump of trees can be put ; and picture the 

 difference such a clump, changing in colour with the 

 season, will make to the amenity of the street. Or there 

 may be one or more small gardens where small trees or 

 bushes and flowering shrubs might be grown, where bright 

 green grass bands or plots may be put. and which if kept 

 in order can be maintained bright and beautiful. Such 

 clumps and bushes and grass bands and plots are, we 

 know, the natural concomitant of the homes of the more 

 well-to-do portion of the community. But so are they 

 often the accompaniments of the better parts of the city 

 and town. On the Continent, for instance, you do not 



NO. 2162, VOL. 86] 



