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alpine flowers in order to send them or to take them home to fill ‘alpine gardens’ 
with them. A large percentage of these plants, uprooted at the time of flowering, 
must perforce die, and many kinds cannot thrive in England. Many of the rarer 
kinds have almost disappeared, and the rarer they become, the more they are 
sought after. 
I am afraid that the leaflet “To Girls and Boys” might be addressed to 
grown up people too, for I have never yet met with people picking flowers in 
Switzerland who thought of leaving some to seed, or of not clearing a spot com- 
pletely of the flowers that made it beautiful. This is more noticeable in English 
visitors, because their fondness for flowers is well-known. 
Choulex, Geneva. R. de i.a Rive. 
Preservation of Wild Plants. — In the latest issued part 
of the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society is the detailed 
paper on this subject read by the Editor of Nature Notes in 
August, 1904. 
England’s Hedgerows.— J. Fosbrooke, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 
writes to the Daily Chronicle as follows : — 
“The proposal of a correspondent to utilise the hedgerows 
for timber growing, will be heartily endorsed by all thoughtful 
people and lovers of the country. The particular charm of 
English scenery as compared with Continental used to be due 
to its wealth of hedgerow timber. A great change has occurred 
during the last twenty or thirty years, due to several causes, 
mostly connected with the economic and political changes that 
have taken place. The County Councils and District Councils 
are themselves in many parts of the country responsible for the 
spirit of vandalism that prevails. Not only do they insist on 
roadside hedges being kept as low as possible, but the presence 
of trees is resented as detrimental to the surface of the road, and 
even wide stretches at the roadside are denuded of all interesting 
wild growth on the plea of keeping them ‘tidy.’ It is high 
time that legislation stepped in and controlled the indiscriminate 
destruction that has been going on.” 
Cheapsidf.’s PIistoric Tree. — “Crowds of interested spec- 
tators in London last week watched some professional sawyers 
crawling about the ‘rigging’ of the handsome old Oriental 
Plane-tree, which for well over a hundred years has formed one 
of the chief attractions of Cheapside. For some time past the 
huge branches, which spread right over the two two-storey shops 
and well into Cheapside itself, have shown signs of breaking 
under the immense weight of the leaves and subsidiary branches, 
and in order to prevent an accident, and also to give more light 
to the surrounding premises, the churchwardens of St. Peter’s, 
West Cheap, commissioned Messrs. W. Cutbush and Son, of 
Highgate Nurseries, to lop some of the larger branches and 
generally ‘ trim ’ up the upper part of the tree. This operation 
will take over a week, as, owing to the confined space in which 
the tree is situated, the branches have to be sawn off in small 
sections, and great care has to be exercised in directing the 
fall of the logs. The tree stands well over a hundred and twenty 
feet high, the trunk at the base being nearly three feet in diameter. 
