3 o8 IS COUNTRY LIFE STILL POSSIBLE? 



In England, he would have planted an oak-wood. 

 Trees, plants, and animals, none of them are to be 

 neglected if the country life is to be developed to the 

 full. Cobbett, who, though not a naturalist, was a 

 keen and practical observer of all sides of rural life, 

 and probably took a more comprehensive purview of 

 the relation of all he saw on his rural rides to the 

 human welfare of the country-side than any other writer 

 since his time, surrounded his whole farm with a broad 

 belt of trees of the newest and most valuable kinds, 

 planting not only oaks and ashes, and such English 

 trees as were suited to the soil, but acacia, plane, Italian 

 poplar, hickory, and walnut. The growth of the acacia 

 in this country is mainly due to Cobbett, and many 

 cottage industries, such as straw and grass plaiting, 

 which he introduced, have increased the comfort of 

 thousands of villages. 



Cobbett, though very sensitive to the beauties of 

 landscape, was not an observer of the ways of animals 

 like Richard Jefferies. But the habit of observation can 

 be learnt, when it has not been gained by early associ- 

 ation, much more readily than the love of the beauties 

 of landscape. It is far more concrete and conscious than 

 the subtle suggestions of natural scenery, though it is 

 so mixed up in the minds of countrymen with sport 

 in all its forms, that it is often difficult to say where 

 the liking for observation of animal life ends, and its 

 use as a means to their destruction begins. Perhaps 

 the truest view is that the habit which begins in the 

 case of animals which are the objects of the chase, is 

 extended to the case of all others, though often this 



