COUNTRY LIFE
Few are the countries exempt from the world-phenomenon of the disparity between population and food-supply, the Malthusian dilemma. How many have refrained from violating the canons of ecology and biological conservation, from overworking the soil without replenish- ment ? I have just received a correspondent's account of a three-days storm in the tropics in which millions of trees were uprooted. the topsoil stripped to the rock-bone, rivers wrenched out of their course, floods blotting out all trace of human tillage and settlement. His description recalls King Lear's " Ye cataracts and hurricanoes spout . . ." and he says significantly: " When man destroys nature, the elements take a terrible revenge." In India, for instance, tree-felling has reached so suicidal a pass that the old Yana Mahatsova, the national tree-planting festival at the beginning of the monsoon, has been revived and, before the year is out, it is hoped that ten million fruit-trees will have been planted.
So indiscriminate has been tree-felling in Britain during the past decade that I suggest this example might stir us to inaugurate an annual tree- planting festival of our own, to begin with the country schools under the teachers' supervision and to take place on May Day or All Hallowe'en. So remarkable and spontaneous of late has been the revival of folk- dancing and singing that I telieve the dovetailing of such a festival with traditional celebration could easily be achieved. Let every child over twelve be responsible for his or her tree and be suitably rewarded for maintaining it in health.
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