A Tree Calendar It is much to be hoped that
" The Men of the Trees," who do quite invaluable work in cultivating a " tree sense " in the community, are not becoming infected with the quite excessive rage for conifers that besets our official afforesters. They have produced, as customary, a tree diary that is a very handsome thing, consisting of romantic photographs of trees with romantic lines of verse subscript. This year's calendar is even better than usual, except in one regard. The best and leafiest of the summer months are adorned with pictures of conifers. " The cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted, wherethe birds make their nests " do not wholly fit an English August. Now the world (especially the newspaper) needs spruce trees ; and we did not need leaders to prove that the trunks of the Scots pine add a glory to sunlight. The larch (which grie- vously offended Wordsworth because of its alien green) gives a hard and valuable wood ; but for such virtues we are spoiling some of the most characteristic of English scenes with excess of fir trees, witness the New Forest and that incomparable haunt of certain rare birds and plants, the Norfolk and Suffolk Breckland. Doubtless the conifers grow more quickly than hard woods into money ; but there is need, and will be more need, of many of the harder woods and the native deciduous trees. Carpenters, decorators and craftsmen are crying out for sycamore, which, after all, afforests itself wherever it is allowed to grow. Ash grows more and more valuable. Oak will never be superseded. Furniture makers demand more and more beech, a wood for which new uses (including the frames of tennis racquets) are being found. Is any English tree so splendid, both in vertebrae and flesh, both in form and colour, both in stature and grace ? Lovers of scenery are joined by many specialists in holding that the popularity of firs is excessive, and both begin to cry- out for more oak, more ash, more beech, more sycamore. Landlords with little home-made afforestation cultivate the same fallacy as the national afforesters. Give us our native trees, and only three conifers can claim our nationality.
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