the quieter portions of our purely English landscape, 

 where its streams are untainted, and its woods are 

 brightly green ; thus agreeably associating a trace of 

 home feeling with our enjoyment of another land. 

 It has no grim mountains weighted with desolation 

 of fractured rock and everlasting snow ; but its gentle 

 hills and sunny slopes are loaded with richer grain. 

 Its fjords are open to the day, mirroring the broad 

 heavens, instead of hiding in the darkness of deep 

 and sinuous ravines ; its streams are never impatient 

 of life, rushing madly down to the sea; but they 

 saunter quietly through the green meadows, brimful 

 of contentment with all around them, and with them- 

 selves; and if it has no vast stretches of gloomy pine 

 forest, interspersed with wide mosses and dismal 

 swamps, it has its solemn groves of oak, and its 

 genial woods of beech — often overhanging the beet- 

 ling sea-cliffs, or sloping gently to the edge of the 

 rolling or rippling waves. Very pleasant to the 

 writer are the recollections of their grateful shade, 

 and of the lovely scenes to which they largely con- 

 tribute in summer time when the sheltered bays, and 

 friths, and narrow sounds, and more open seas of this 

 fragmentary land are blue as the clear and often 

 cloudless skies. The beechwoods of Denmark form 

 indeed one of the most distinguishing features of its 

 landscape ; Denmark is peculiarly the home of the 

 beech ; nowhere else perhaps in the world does it 

 grow, within the same limits, so abundantly and with 

 such luxuriance. No wonder the kind-hearted and 

 genial Danes love this noble and graceful tree, and 

 have adopted it as the symbol of their nationality ; 

 agreeing doubtless with our Gilbert White, who 

 knowing the beech as it grew upon its favourite 

 chalk soil, pronounced it "the most lovely of all 

 forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or 

 bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs." 

 No wonder that Danish painters delight in the beech 

 wood, depicting with sympathetic care and Nature's 

 truth, the brilliance of golden light upon its extended 

 leafage, and the depth of contrasting shade its denser 

 masses cast upon the ground. How charmingly too, 

 as may be seen in the National Gallery at Copen- 

 hagen, their pencils luxuriate among the anemones 

 which in early spring disport in fairy troops around 

 the great purply trunks — fluttering their gay attire in 

 the breeze upon a sunny bank that slopes down to 

 still waters, where they see themselves reflected 

 along with the beech- trees' pendent twigs and quiver- 

 ing leaves. 



This predominance of the beech is however an occur- 

 rence of comparatively recent times, the result, mainly, 

 of natural causes which have also effected other 

 changes in the Danish forest. These causes and their 

 effects have been studiously investigated by the late 

 Dr. Vaupell, a Danish author, whose exposition of 

 the subject, especially as regards the suppression of 

 the oak by the beech, I will shortly endeavour to 

 present in a summarised form. Meantime let us 



glance at the forest as it existed during prehistoric 

 ages, though probably after man had migrated into 

 the land. Professor Stenstrup is, I believe, the chief 

 original authority on this subject, but the informa- 

 tion which follows is derived from Erslev's "Dansl<e 

 Stat," and the " Jordbeskrivelse " of Ludwig Daa. 



Observations made in the peat mosses of Denmark 

 have shown that during the long course of ages four 

 successive changes have taken place in its forest- 

 growths ; that in the far distant past, the gloomy 

 Scotch fir, which long ago ceased to be indigenous, 

 ruled like a heavy Saturn over wide domains where 

 now the graceful and lively beech-tree, youngest- 

 born of the forest-gods, holds undisputed sway. Den- 

 mark abounds with peat-mosses, the several varieties 

 being known as forest-moses, carr-mosses, and 

 ling-mosses ; the first only containing the remains 

 of trees, whose branches and leaves have contributed 

 to the formation of the peat. They are situated 

 in tracks which either are or have been wooded, 

 within roundish or elongated hollows among 

 hills of gravel and rolled stones ; though of less 

 extension than the other kinds, they are usually 

 deeper, and several of them have not unfrequently a 

 linked connection. Originally they were lakes, and 

 while passing by slow degrees, in consequence of the 

 growth and decay of successive generations of water- 

 plants and moss, from the watery state to that of 

 consolidated peat, branches and even whole trees 

 were blown into them by violent storms from the 

 surrounding hills ; trees too which grew along their 

 margins, and upon the mosses themselves, fell, and 

 also become imbedded in the slowly but constantly 

 increasing mass. Some of the trees which grew 

 upon the moss yet retain their erect position, others 

 lie about in every direction ; but all those blown from 

 the hills and the margins have their roots directed 

 outwards, and their tops towards the centre of the 

 moss. Fragments of charcoal, and charred stems, 

 often found in the mosses, are probably a result of 

 fires kindled by lighting. 



Of the more distinctive trees found in the mosses, 

 the aspen (Popuhis trcmula) occupies the lowest 

 place ; next comes the Scotch fir ; then the oak ; 

 and finally the alder and the beech. The birch is 

 found throughout the whole mass of peat, but being 

 of a light loose texture is, like the alder, also more 

 frequently denoted by bark filled with peat-earth 

 than by stems and branches. Some of the forest- 

 mosses appear to have been formed after the aspen 

 tree's period, as they contain no remains of it ; 

 while in their deepest layer there are many remains 

 of the Scotch fir, considerable traces of which appear 

 in the forest-mosses generally, though nowhere any 

 trace of the spruce. Remains of the oak, always 

 above the fir, are also numerous in the mosses ; but, 

 according to Dr. Vaupell, the species, or variety, 

 found there is the Querats Robtir pediinculata, now 

 common in Denmark, and not, as others have stated, 



