332 Remarks on the Fall 



But, to return to the aged and prostrate ash : round one 

 half of its trunk (as I have often been told) had formerly 

 been fixed a semicircular bench, of which,. however, -no trace 

 remained since my recollection, save the seat-handles, as they 

 may be called, consisting of two pieces of oak timber 1 J ft. 

 in length, carved at the end in rude imitatiori of the elbows 

 of a chair, and let into the living wood, one on each side of 

 the tree, to serve the purpose of a back-rest to the seat. As 

 the tree had increased considerably in circumference since this 

 barbarous treatment had been practised upon it, the living 

 wood had, of course, closed in upon, and partially overgrown, 

 these chair-handles, which consequently became more firmly 

 fixed and deeply embedded by every succeeding year's growth. 

 On the breaking up of the but, I was surprised to find that 

 the portion of these oaken handles which was enclosed 

 within the live timber was, for the most part, in a state of 

 complete decay, while that which was without, and had been 

 exposed all along to the action of the elements, was still sound 

 and solid. Hence it would appear that the sap, or internal 

 moisture, of a tree effects the decay of extraneous timber 

 artificially brought into contact with it, far more powerfully 

 than do the ordinary alternations of heat and cold, drought and 

 moisture. bnsa ddi 1o jlond odi wolsd KiTHS^ 



The trunk of the ash, for about the first 18 ft. (i. e. up to the 

 place where it appeared to have been pollarded), was hollow, 

 and decayed at the centre, and afforded some twenty or thirty 

 good barrow loads of rotten wood, which, in the course of 

 another year, when it becomes more completely " wroxed," 

 will be very serviceable for horticultural purposes. ., 



Dorcus parallelipipedus Stephens, and Sinodendron cylin- 

 dricum Stephens.— Throughout this carious portion of the 

 tree there occurred numerous specimens, both in the larva and 

 the perfect state, of the lesser stag-beetle (Z)6rcus [dorkos y a 

 stag; from the mandibles resembling antlers] parallelipipedus 



" clasping tendrils," and do not constrain, although occasionally they do 

 some injury by choking and destroying the foliage of the plants up and 

 over which they climb. Cowper, on climbers, has thus elegantly written : — 

 .YFonibiowe Dajjmj ad oj bn& 



" [Some clothe the soil that feeds them, far diffused 

 . And lowly creeping, modest and yet fair, 

 r /Like virtue, thriving most where little seefr:]3>hl f noibn9b 

 Some, more aspiring, catch the neighbour shrub , 



With clasping tendrils, and invest his branch, 

 - Else unadorned, with many a gay festoon 

 And fragrant chaplet, recompensing well 

 The strengtli they borrow with the grace thev lend." 

 1 riOtffw Oi ; Ftfrao-ss *& moil -.-ft rCoWp^t « Garden," — .7. 1). 



