10 JUNE 1949, Page 15

Felling and Planting From a great many districts have arisen

cries of protest against the felling of trees. It is, of course, always a melancholy sight when a fine tree falls, when, as Bridges wrote, "a hundred years of pride Crash— " ; but I must hold that the tree-feller often has the better of the argument. When the trees of a woodland, whether deciduous or evergreen, have reached or passed their best, it is well to fell them and substitute use for beauty. The solitary tree is in a different class. What is important is that where trees are felled others should be planted, whether for use ot amenity. A grove (such as I see almost daily) left to an unlovely tangle of stool-wood and "weed, especially biennial thistle, represents a crime against the community. The land is wasted and the beauty dead. I rejoice to see that, in replanting, some suburban authorities are favouring our wild service tree. It is to my view the most perfect of garden trees, fair in flower, often comely in shape and sufficiently dwarf, with a widish spread of branch. Almost all the white-beam class are attractive. On the subject of garden trees—the mulberry is disappearing, chiefly because those who desire to plant it cannot find a seller, and the lack of supply has now reduced the demand.