94 POLLARDS AND HOW TO TREAT THEM ; WITH SPECIAL 



to be hoped that in a few years we may have in Epping Forest a good 

 store of spear hornbeams illustrating the proper form of the species. 

 Sir Fowell Buxton has given me his opinion, which seems highly 

 probable, that pollarding was preceded by coppicing; and that thelatter 

 practice gave way to the former owing to the damage done by game to 

 the young shoots when springing from the stump. The familiar 

 fact that pollards of considerable age very commonly spring from the 

 ground in groups would thus be explained by their having sprung 

 originally as coppice-shoots from a single stump. Either deer and 

 cattle, or ground game, or both, may have been the cause of the 

 change of practice. 



As with other things, there are two ways to pollard a tree, the 

 right way and the wrong way. If a tree is to be pollarded, the 

 proper method of procedure is to cut off the main stem and branches 

 a little above the fork. It was not, however, I suppose, to be 

 expected that the commoner desirous of firewood should think of 

 anything beyond getting the maximum quantity with the minimum 

 of trouble, so that our pollard hornbeams have mostly been cut behnv 



the fork, at the point indicated by the line in the middle figure. The 

 consequence is that, instead of repairing the injury by healthy growth, 

 as in the right hand figure, we have diseased misshapen heads, like 

 that in the left hand figure, with mop-like branches and too often a 

 rotten heart to the trunk. Damp collects among the warty 

 excrescences of the head ; and those who have accompanied our 

 autumn fungus forays know the abundance and variety of the 

 Agarici, Boleti, Bulgarias, and Tremellas that hasten the decay of the 

 rotten stems they frequent. Insect larvae, moreover, are perhaps 

 more likely to attack trees in such an unhealthy condition than when 

 thoroughly sound. 



Similar motives of " economy " led, no doubt, to the dense over- 

 crowding of the pollards which characterised many parts of the 

 Forest at the time when it was taken over by the Corporation. So 



