REFERENCE TO IlIK MOKNliKAMS IN KPl'INi; FOREST. 93 



up, as in the "shock-head" forms famihar to us along our river 

 hanks. Though not commonly pollarded in this country, poplars 

 are so occasionally on the Continent, and are so commonly, under the 

 name of cottonwood, as fuel, in the United States. The hornbeam 

 has been so uniformly pollarded in England, as hardly ever to be 

 seen as a spear tree. It is a timber tree, and derives its name from 

 its horny wood, which was used in the manufacture of yokes and 

 cog-wheels ; but it furnishes so excellent a fuel that it has been 

 regarded almost exclusively as firewood. 



If, on the other hand, we go into a plantation of pines, firs, 

 spruces, or larches, we find no such coppice growth ; for, with the 

 exception of the Redwood of California {^Sequoia sempervirens), the 

 Conifene do not produce "adventitious" shoots or buds, as these 

 shoots are termed by botanists. 



It is rather remarkable that in most of our modern botanical text- 

 books, which we borrow so generally from the Germans, there is 

 hardly any mention of pollards or coppice as illustrative of adven- 

 titious budding. When the authors of these works dwell on the 

 comparative rarity of adventitious buds they may perhaps only mean 

 to imply their rarity on natural uninjured structures, since they are 

 surely common enough on cut or injured surfaces, from the well- 

 known case of the leaves of Begonia to the pollards we are now 

 considering. In calling these shoots, or the buds in which they 

 originate, " adventitious," we merely imply that they arise in no 

 definite order. 



Pollarding, and, to limit the subject of our consideration, the 

 pollarding of the hornbeam, is no doubt a practice of considerable 

 antiquity. Having traced this species through the wildest woodlands 

 of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, and Essex, I have little hesitation 

 in terming it one of the most characteristically indigenous trees of 

 south-east England. At the same time it must, I fear, be admitted 

 that, until our own time, our woodlands have been regarded, both 

 by commoners and by lords of the manors, solely as sources of 

 l)rofit, on the one side as firewood, on the other as cover for game 

 or as timber. No considerations of scientific treatment or of beauty 

 have prevailed, though some people seem even now to prefer the 

 grotesque distortions of disease to the symmetry of healthy develop- 

 ment. 



In normal growth the hornbeam somewhat resembles the beech, 

 its lower boughs occasionally sweeping down to the ground, and it is 



