A Tree - Worshipper It happened that the memory of W. H.
Hudson, the greatest of the Jefferies school, was celebrated in London last week by an Anglo- Argentine group. It should have been attended by Miss Nancy Price, who on the same day wrote a plaintive plea for trees in a letter to The Times. Hudson was a frank, self-confessed tree-worshipper. He once asked me to find him a country cottage and said that any cottage would do, with one proviso: it must have a good tree in the garden. The difference a good tree can make to life is indeed astonishing, and I suppose that, while we lack forests, we have many more single trees in England than any country. I have always liked General Botha's comment on England at his first visit. He said, of his journey from Plymouth to London, " I always thought that I must be coming to a forest." Of late the destruction of single trees—and indeed of some avenues—has been ruthless ; and the leaders of the iconoclastic movement have been local authorities. We may rejoice to see—in the excellent journal of the Men of the. Trees—that Sir John Boyd Orr stresses the need for trees as preservers of moisture and a defence against aridity and denudation.
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