Colenso. — Bush Jottings. 313 



group of majestic-looking tree-ferns, species of Dicksonia ; 

 they are about, say, 20ft .-25ft. high, and stand pretty far 

 apart from each other, so that one can walk easily between 

 them, and sit down, if so disposed, on the low and soft grassy 

 herbage at their bases. Above, at top, their perennial crowns 

 of large spreading green fronds extend, meeting and crossing 

 each other — some horizontally, some gracefully drooping — 

 while their stout upright stems are thickly clothed with 

 their own dead and grey-brown fronds, hanging closely and 

 not ungracefully down, wrapping them, as it were, in tolerably 

 regular rows or layers from the base to the top, as if to pro- 

 tect their trunks, or even to keep them warm. Those dead 

 hanging fronds are from their natural and regular yearly decay, 

 and evidently not a single frond has ever fallen off or been 

 displaced. They greatly add to the solemn and still beauty 

 of the scene. If gently lifted their clean stems will be seen in 

 all their rich brown colour and fibrous comeliness, without 

 any small ferns, mosses, or other plants growing on them. 



Such a spectacle, when undisturbed and deeply embowered 

 and surrounded by ancient timber-trees, — 



Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, 

 Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, 

 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir. 



Keats, " Hyperion." 



— is to me a most pleasing one, causing me to behold it with 

 'bated breath, with a kind of feeling approaching to senti- 

 mental awe, better felt than expressed in those deep secluded 

 forests — such a feeling as one might reasonably suppose 

 would arise within the bosom of the wary and discreet visitor 

 to the ancient oracle of Apollo at Delphos three thousand 

 years ago. In such a place, and with such feelings in this 

 retired solitude in the grand temple of Nature, the suitable 

 words of Bishop Heber, so descriptive of "majestic silence," 

 are likely to be vividly recalled to mind, — 



No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung ; 

 Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. 

 Majestic silence !* 



Heber, " Palestine." 



But there is yet another and a very different sight to be 

 seen and admired among my groups of big living tree-ferns — 



* This quotation from Bishop Heber's poem was altered in later 

 editions to — 



No workman steel, no ponderous axes rung, 

 Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung. 

 Silently as a dream the fabric rose, 

 No sound of hammer or of saw was there. 



I may here observe that these two last lines are also in Cowper's " Task," 

 the Winter Morning Walk, book v. 



