8 Introductory 



all through the Midlands, you have rich pasture land 

 dotted over with elms, oaks and beeches. This is typical 

 English scenery, and is to be seen nowhere else. In 

 Devonshire the climate is so mild that you will see 

 many trees that will generally only grow in warmer 

 countries this makes many people who visit this 

 county for the first time say how much they are re- 

 minded of the South of France or of Italy. 



If instead of going across England you travel up to 

 the North you will perhaps see the Yorkshire or Scotch 

 moors. Here the hills are covered with short purple 

 heather, and, owing to the cold winds, no trees will 

 grow. Until you began to notice it for yourself you 

 would never believe how great a difference trees make 

 to the country. A few years ago one of the magazines 

 published an article illustrated with pictures showing 

 side by side the London parks of which we are so proud 

 and the same parks as they would look shorn of their 

 trees. No one would have taken them for the same 

 places. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens looked 

 flat uninteresting wastes with no landmarks but broad 

 paths, artificial lakes, and Hyde Park Corner and the 

 Marble Arch towering up at the ends. 



The trees of which we have been speaking call up in 

 the mind a picture of something very tall with a thick 

 woody trunk and spreading branches on which green 

 leaves are borne. The mere size is not, however, always 

 a safe test of whether a plant is or is not to be called a 

 tree, as it partly depends on the conditions under which 

 the plant grows. You are accustomed to think of a 

 cabbage as a plant a foot high and of an oak as a tall 

 stout tree. This idea is perfectly true, yet, in the mild 

 climate of Jersey are grown cabbage plants over six 



