A PLEA FOR TREES IN TOWNS. 2538 
which you could look down on the blended mass 
of house and Tree spread out below you, and 
appearing to nestle in the hollow of a valley, 
through which flowed the glistening waters of a 
rushing stream, winding along by many a 
wooded upland from the rugged moorland, which, 
in gloomy grandeur, as it stood out against the 
sky-line, bounded the view in the far distance. 
There are, unhappily, few of our towns to which 
such a description could be applied. Beauty and 
health—nay, life—are unfortunately, in this too 
practical age, sacrificed in order to secure the 
greatest degree of so-called ‘ utility.’ There is 
kept up amongst us too great a distinction between 
the useful and the beautiful. Everybody in town, 
no doubt, appreciates more or less the country, 
and likes to visit it each year for at least a short 
season. But this season is usually very short, 
and townspeople are mostly content to spend the 
greater part of their lives in their deserts of bricks 
and mortar, with only the small relief afforded by 
town gardens—often few and far between—as 
some kind of compensation for the absence of 
woods and green fields. 
