About forty years have elapsed since Liebig taught to all who were able and willing to learn that trees and other vegetables are composed of two classes of material: 1st, the carbon and elements of water derived from air and rain; and 2d, the nitrogenous and incombustible saline compounds derived from the soil. The possible atmospheric origin of some of the nitrogen is still under debate, but there is no doubt that all which remains behind as incombustible ash, when we burn a leaf, is so much matter taken out of the soil. Every scientific agriculturist knows that certain crops take away certain constituents from the soil, and that if this particular cropping continues without a replacing of those particular constituents of fertility, the soil must become barren in reference to the crop in question, though other crops demanding different food may still grow upon it. The agricultural vandalism that I have watched with so much vexation is the practice of annually raking and sweeping together the fallen leaves, collecting them in barrows and carts, and then carrying them quite away from the soil in which the trees are growing, or should grow. I have inquired of the men thus employed whether they put anything on the ground to replace these leaves, and they have not merely replied in the negative, but have been evidently surprised at such a question being asked. What is finally done with the leaves I do not know; they may be used for the flower-beds or sold to outside florists. I have seen a large heap accumulated near to the Round Pond. Now, the leaves of forest trees are just those portions containing the largest proportion of ash; or, otherwise stated, they do the most in exhausting the soil. In Epping Forest, in the New Forest, and other forests where there has been still more “terrible neglect of timely thinning,” the trees continue to grow vigorously, and have thus grown for centuries; the leaves fall on the soil wherein the trees grow, and thus continually return to it all they have taken away. They do something besides this. During the winter they gradually decay. This decay is a process of slow combustion, giving out just as much heat as though all the leaves were gathered together and used as fuel for a bonfire; but the heat in the course of natural decay is gradually given out just when and where it is wanted, and the coating of leaves, moreover, forms a protecting winter jacket to the soil.