10 MARCH 1950, Page 18

Riverside Trees A chronicler of the Lake county has been

emphasising the value of trees (not least in my experience of scrub oaks) in holding up the banks of the burns which in flood-time may have volume and force enough to break the natural barriers on the lower reaches. It is a nice question which is the best sort of tree for the purpose. In Australia, so far as 1 saw, the favourite bank-prop, used over long reaches, was the weeping willow, grown according to local belief from slips brought from St. Helena as memorials of Napoleon. Here and there it is so used in South America. Altogether the commonest European trees in Argentina were those opposites, the weeping willows, which grow there to a fantastic size, and the Lombardy poplars with their fastigiate boughs. In Australia, where most native trees are gums, of hundreds of sorts, and evergreens, some English deciduous trees greatly flourish—for example, the fine memorial oaks of Perth. '