128 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



The effort to make use of the parks to supple- 

 ment nature-teaching in the schools is also an advance 

 in the right direction, and one that could be followed 

 up with advantage. 



The trials of the climate of London, and the hurtful 

 fogs, must not be forgotten when criticising. They 

 are no new thing, and gardeners for two hundred 

 years have had to contend with the smoke, and wage 

 war against its effects. But the evil has, of course, 

 become greatly intensified during the last fifty years. 

 Fairchild, the author of the "City Gardener," in 1722, 

 regrets that plants will not prosper because of the 

 "Sea Coal." Mirabeau, writing from London in 1784, 

 deplores the fogs in England, and especially " those 

 of London. The prodigious quantity of coal that is 

 consumed, adds to their consistence, prolongs their 

 duration, and eminently contributes to render these 

 vapours more black, and more suffocating — you feel 

 this when rising in the morning. To breathe the 

 fresh morning air is a sort of happiness you cannot 

 enjoy in this immense Capital." Yet in spite of this 

 gloomy picture there are trees now within the London 

 area, which were getting black when Mirabeau wrote. 

 Smuts are by no means solely responsible for trees 

 dying. There are many other contributory causes. 

 The drainage and want of water is often a serious 

 danger, and bad pruning in the case of the younger 

 trees is another. When branches begin to die, it is a 

 very safe and salutary precaution to lop them off, as 

 has lately been done to such a noticeable extent in 

 Kensington Gardens. But the cutting and pruning of 

 trees by those employed by various municipal bodies is 

 often lamentably performed. The branches are not cut 



