CHAPTER XIV 

 TREES AND WOODS 



TREES form a very important part of the vege- 

 table covering of this earth. We have already 

 found out two ways in which they are useful to 

 us, when we spoke of the storage of carbon in 

 coal and the re-making of the supply of oxygen 

 in the air. We must now study them a little 

 more fully, and especially consider the effect of 

 them when they grow together in great quan- 

 tities, as they do in our woods and forests. 



England is certainly a country of many 

 trees, but at the same time we have not really 

 much woodland, and there is now hardly any- 

 thing left that we can call forest. This was 

 not always the case, but for various reasons, 

 some of which we shall perhaps be better able 

 to understand later on, for many hundred years 

 people in England have been cutting down more 

 trees than they have re-planted to take their 

 place. Probably in early days the face of the 

 country was largely covered with forests, and 

 even in old maps we can often find that woods 

 are marked down in places where we can now 

 see very little more than hedgerow trees. Men 

 cleared away the woods in the first place in 



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