T44 



THE WOODLANDS IN MAY 



THOSE whom choice or fortune has led to spend a 

 fine May day in the deep woodlands of the south, will 

 have learnt to prize the unrivalled splendour of the 

 English spring, when lasting and unbroken sunshine 

 has called every tree and bush, from the oak to the 

 trailing sweetbriar, into leaf together, and the beauty 

 of the woodlands appeals to the senses with a force and 

 freshness which the maturer months of summer foliage 

 can never weaken nor efface from the memory. There 

 is an unwritten law in some of the villages of America 

 that on a certain day every able-bodied inhabitant shall 

 go forth, and not return, until on land, either set apart 

 or otherwise suitable for the purpose, he has planted a 

 tree. Now, if ever, such an example of the duty of 

 man to Nature should appeal to every Englishman. 

 Even though the craze for destroying the beautiful 

 hedge-row timber, which, massed in the distance, makes 

 the foreigner believe that he is for ever approaching a 

 forest, which for ever recedes before him, no longer 

 forms part of the enlightened farmer's creed, there 

 are still many counties which the axe has left treeless 

 and bare ; where the countryman never sees a real 



