CHAPTER XXI 



The Marsh Warbler's Music 



From Wells I went on to Bristol and thence to Chep- 

 stow, where, a few miles out, I hoped to find one of 

 my rare birds, but on enquiry discovered that it had 

 long vanished from this haunt. There was nothing 

 for me but to extract what pleasure I could from the 

 castle, the valley of the Wye, and Tintern Abbey. 

 At Chepstow, a small parasitic town much given to 

 drink, I saw two wonderful things, which the guide- 

 book writers probably do not notice — a walnut tree and 

 an ivy tree, both growing in the castle. The first 

 must be one of the finest walnut trees in the country : 

 one of its enormous horizontal branches measured 

 eighteen yards from the trunk to the end ; the branch 

 on the opposite side of the trunk measured fifteen 

 yards, giving the tree a breadth of ninety-nine feet ! 

 The other, the ivy, was a tree in the ordinary sense 

 of the word, that is to say, a plant above the size of a 

 bush which is not a parasite supported by another tree 

 but wholly self-sustained. It grows near but not touch- 

 ing the wall, with a round straight bole three feet in 

 circumference and fifteen feet in height, with a rough 

 elm-tree-like bark, crowned with a dense round mass 



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