TREES ABOUT TOWN 



'UST outside London there is a circle of fine, 

 large houses, each standing in its own 

 grounds, highly rented, and furnished with 

 every convenience money can supply. If 

 any one will look at the trees and shrubs growing 

 in the grounds about such a house, chosen at ran- 

 dom for an example, and make a list of them, he 

 may then go round the entire circumference of 

 Greater London, mile after mile, many days' 

 journey, and find the list ceaselessly repeated. 



There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, 

 araucarias, laurels, planes, beds of rhododendrons, 

 and so on. There are various other foreign shrubs 

 and trees whose names have not become familiar, 

 and then the next grounds contain exactly the 

 same, somewhat differently arranged. Had they 

 all been planted by Act of Parliament, the result 

 could scarcely have been more uniform. 



If, again, search were made in these enclosures 

 for English trees and English shrubs, it would be 

 found that none have been introduced. The Eng- 

 lish trees, timber trees, that are there, grew before 

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