THE RESTORATION OF SCENERY.
THE preservation of scenery, by making "natural pictures" a kind of public property, to be preserved and kept for the resthetic enjoyment of the people, just as paintings are purchased and preserved for the same purpose, has more than once been advocated in the Spectator. Professor W. R. Fisher, in communicating to the Daily Chronicle observations made in the industrial districts of the Belgian Ardennes, and subsequently in the Black Country of our Midlands, "goes one better." He sees his way to a plan for the restoration of scenery; and unlike the restorers of " genuine old masters," who made a mystery of their doubtful craft, he gives full details of his experience in both countries, and his conclusions as to the treatment neces- sary. It was when staying at Cleitean Mirwart, in the Belgian Ardennes, that he first conceived the idea of "restoring" the Black Country. He saw vigorous ash and sycamore trees growing on heaps of glassy slag from an abandoned iron-f urnace. That kind of slag is almost the least promising material for woodland soil which can be imagined. It is hard as glass, breaks into shiny lumps, like the " rock" sold on sweetstuff.stalls in the streets, and has very seldom been put to any useful purpose. At Middlesborough, where, on the shallow, muddy, dull banks of the Tees estuary, there was never any " scenery " worth looking at at all the Black Country of Cleveland is hardly less picturesque than the sour flat fields which once fringed the ugly estuary—they " dumped " hundreds of thousands of tone of slag along the banks, and gained a deeper river and a firm bank and quay. But it does not grow trees yet. Probably it never will. But as the trees grew in the slag, or among the slag, in the Ardennes, the idea occurred to Professor Fisher that the great "spoil banks," or heaps of all sorts of soil dug out of the pita before the coal or iron is reached, might just as well be planted with trees in England. If they were set with the quickly growing kinds used for mine props, the enterprise might be profitable as well as picturesque. The soil in these mounds is by no means of the forbidding character which appears on the surface. The deeper the mine, the more rocky, as a rule, is the d6bris extracted; but this, which is taken out last, and scattered on the surface, often conceals thousands of tons of good soil piled below, There is, therefore, no reason why the colliery and ironstone countries should not be covered with wooded mounds, wherever a worked-out or disused pit now marks the surface with an ugly and disfiguring scar. Scotch fir, a rapid. growing, hardy, and self-sowing species, is clearly the tree for the purpose. Moreover, it is in great demand for prop- timber, and the estimate of 70,000 tons imported for that purpose, quoted by Professor Fisher, is probably far below the mark. Some such effort at restoration of ruined scenery seems to he entertained in a different quarter. From the Welsh coal-districts there comes a separate and independent
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