REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM 57 



presence or absence of trees. Exactly why this should be 

 is difficult to say in all cases, but in most it can clearly be 

 traced to a custom, born of necessity and a low type of 

 civilisation, of living on and amidst the barest necessaries 

 of life. Prosperity and refinement, on the other hand, 

 always bring about a system of preserving and creating 

 tree growth on a scale commensurate with the develop- 

 ment of the country, and the requirements of its particular 

 situation. 



Trees grown for ornament and shelter must be regarded 

 as factors which ameliorate and improve the climatic, 

 hygienic, and social conditions of any district, and as such 

 they will be provided wherever the population possesses 

 sufficient intelligence and wealth to recognise these facts 

 in the first place, and means to act upon them in the 

 second. Under the influence of shelter trees, the local 

 conditions under which mankind exists are improved by 

 a higher or more uniform temperature, more luxuriant 

 vegetation, and more healthy surroundings for live-stock 

 than where trees are absent. Landscape or ornamental 

 trees, again, render a district less monotonous, more 

 attractive, and present a greater variety of outlooks to 

 the eye than is possible in treeless localities. It is said 

 that an absence of all interests or changes in life leads to 

 intellectual deterioration, and frequently to insanity. If 

 this is so, a monotonous landscape must aid in the same 

 direction, and there is every reason to suppose that the 

 amenities of life are as necessary to the healthy develop- 

 ment of a civilised community as food and warmth. It is 

 perhaps impossible to state the proportionate number of 

 trees or acres of shelter wood which are necessary to con- 

 stitute a properly balanced country. There are innumer- 

 able gradations between the man who plants a tree in his 

 back garden or front lawn to the planter or owner of a wood 

 of fifty acres, and street and hedgerow trees play as import- 



