373 



THE FLORAL SANCTUARY OF A MEANWOODSIDE 



GARDEN. 



F. ARNOLD LEES, M.R.C.S. 



(With Plate VII.) 



Though, someday, an extension of the tram-track, to form a 

 ring route from Leeds, via Headingley or Meanwood to the 

 North ' Town-end ' again, would seem to be inevitable ; it is to 

 be hoped that a ' parking ' of the western area of the Mean- 

 woodside demesne of the Oateses — one of whom succumbed so 

 heroically in the blizzards of the South Pole ! — will not be one 

 of those things left undone for which the City Fathers might 

 have to do penance for the loss of that beauty which is not only 

 a ' joy for ever ' but has a distinct even sanate value in Pubhc 

 Economics. This flor-historic enclosure has been and perhaps 

 still is in danger of falling into the hand of the tame exploiter 

 of the fair and feral ! Were that to eventuate, like the old 

 Cardigan Estate ' Zoo,' wherein, though the castellated Bear Pit 

 tower still remains, overgrown and hidden by monstrous Jews'- 

 -ears' bearing bourtrees, the writer remembers the American 

 Agave or Aloe, traditionally flowering ' once in a hundred 

 years,' towering into blossom and shewn for a fee, about the 

 last 'Fifty of Eighteen-hundred, and where the stately Tulip 

 Tree flowered too ; much of unreplacable educative interest 

 would pass for ever at the bidding of that modern Antseus 

 the Builder who each time he ' touches earth ' gains strength 

 to go one better still. 



So much and enough, for verburn sap has yet its growing 

 power in the leader of the civic human tree, by way of preamble 

 to a ' check ' deasil — clockwise perambulation ' for luck '- -of 

 matchless Mcanwoodside by certain Leeds naturalists on a not 

 as yet very remote Thor's-day. 



The party, fit, if few, as Nature's lovers ever are, were met 

 and welcomed by the then occupying tenant (Lt.-Col. Kitson- 

 Clark) who furnished a spectacular adit of more than mere 

 pass-the-time value by his realistic exposition of the power of 

 the Axe of the Bronze Age in the hairy hand of Man of early 

 times. Mr. Clark had himself ' cast ' a modern axe-head in 

 facsimile of an original ; and having thonged it securely in the 

 old way, to a massy, kneed arm of oak, demonstrated how 

 effectively, ' ravagingly like Randall's (the pugihst's) fist ' — 

 how many one wonders, passim, remember their Reynolds, 

 whose name is only perpetuated in a Miscellany of the demos I: — 

 it might be wielded for defence, or quickset, offensive purpose ! 

 its lovely lopping powers, rightly poised and slung, being 

 exercised then and there on redundant branchwood and 

 bavin ! It was an unforgettable exhibition, visuaHsing and 

 re-clothing a long defunct subject of Antiquarian surmise. 



1918 Dec. 1. 



