17 OCTOBER 1931, Page 13

* * * * THE WRONG TREES.

It was said at one time that the substitution of the aero- plane for the ship had changed the scenery of England. There was this much truth in that hyperbole : the Crown (now a Government Department) was substituting ash trees, needed for aircraft, for oak trees, once needed for wooden walls, over considerable areas of the New Forest. And there was this advantage in the change, that the soil grows better ashes than oaks. Most casual visitors probably miss a sight of the ash plantations ; and much more obvious to the tripper or the specialist than the ash is the fir. Now this sort of tree is more or less alien to the place and not peculiarly well suited to it. Aesthetically it is