COUNTRY LIFE
MucH has been said and written in public lately about the felling of big trees in the English hedgerows. Such trees are usually elm and oak, for where roads are bordered by beech the floor is always a mossy bank with a wood beyond it. The elm, though not a native, is now a distinctive feature of our landscape, especially in dairy-farming districts. It punctuates the " chequered acres," billowing up, swell upon swell of foliage, like a wooden ship of the line under full sail. With its companions it stands in the boundaries, an individual beauty in the green armada.
In the autumn that armada blazes in a magnificent defeat, its sails going down in a golden fire before the October winds. How many of our English artists have tried, and failed, to capture that moment of splendour after a feverish autumn conflict, when sunlight breaks across the scene, and the day ends with this tableau of glory, all our English poetry shouting from the elm-tops!
If the utilitarians have their way, we shall lose all this. Is it worth it? The grim advocates remind us that the trees obstruct tractors, over- hang the head-land of the fields, draw up much COFB to stalk, harbour furry and feathered vermin. They are irrefutable. But even so may heaven and our ancestors, backed by a tradition of several centuries of increasing beauty, forgive them. But this is the Cockney in the country speaking.
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