Where Trees Were The ugly effects of war became lamentably
apparent in scores of the small beautiful woods and spinneys that dot the countryside. When the trees have been completely cleared, nothing 'remains—so a West Country correspondent complains—but a host of weeds whose seeds are blowing about the fields. Nothing is being done or likely to be done by way either of replanting or grubbing the stools. Natural reafforestation would soon kill out the weeds if it were allowed, but the rabbits see to it that the seedlings are destroyed. This, of course, is not so everywhere. One grove that I admired almost daily is quite thick with, both oak and chestnut seedlings. Some of the woods where a few trees only or none were felled are now virtually impenetrable from the multiplication of brambles, so quickly does any surface in our " humanised landscape" degenerate when human labour ceases. As to the cleared areas in the few places where the area has been well encircled by rabbit wire, the speed of regeneration has been startling and satisfactory wherever ash trees flourished in the neighbourhood., The ash, when nursed. by other trees, is an immensely speedy grower, and is the first favourite, not even except- ing holly, with rabbits. Even Cobbett was not a greater lover of the ash.
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