848 



Betula alba. In low wet or boggy, and in elevated sandy, heathy 

 or turfy, woods ; frequent throughout the county and Isle of Wight. 

 Marvel Wood, near Newport, is mainly composed of this tree. At 

 Apse Castle, plentiful. Common in the New Forest, where the trees 

 reach a very respectable height, but greatly inferior to the magnitude 

 the species attains in the north of Britain. Boggy parts of Wolmer 

 Forest, as well as in upland woods in most parts of Hampshire. I do 

 not know if we have both the species or varieties (B. alba and B. glu- 

 tinosa) given in the ' Manual.' 



Alnus glutinosa. Common in wet swampy ground, water mea- 

 dows, banks of rivers, streams, &c. throughout Hampshire. Often 

 forming groves or thickets by itself, called Alder swamps or Alder 

 cars, as at Alverston and elsewhere in this island. 



Fagus sylvatica. In dry, and more especially steep upland woods; 

 less abundant in the low flat grounds or along the sea coast; profusely 

 on almost all the chalk ridges of the mainland, on the precipitous 

 flanks of which it constitutes vast natural woods, called in the county 

 " hangers" sometimes composed solely of beeches without any under- 

 growth whatever, at other times filled up with a dense thicket of 

 brush, or intermixed with yew, ash, oak and other forest trees. The 

 profound silence and solitude of these woods, standing betwixt con- 

 verging hills, which they clothe to their summits, and descend on 

 their opposite side into valleys as lonely and devoid of life and 

 sound, — where the eye cannot pierce the interminable vista of tall, 

 straight and smooth boles shooting up high over head ere they ex- 

 pand into the leafy canopy that half excludes the day, shedding a 

 twilight gloom on the pale brown flowerless ground, bestrewn with 

 many generations of fallen leaves, crisp and crackling under the tread 

 of the sylvan wanderer, — inspire a strange feeling of awe, half akin to 

 fear, and the words of Dante in the opening canto of the ' Inferno ' 

 unconsciously recur to memory : — 



E quanto a dir qual era e cosa duva 

 Questa selva selvaggia, ed aspra e forte, 

 Che nel pensier riunuova la paura ! 

 Tanto e amara che poco e piu morte. 



Such is the character of our beech woods in their inmost recesses and 

 in their most exclusively unmixed features, but on the sunny slopes 

 of the chalk hills, where the beeches stand detached and interspersed 

 with other trees and a rich undergrowth of shrubs, beauty and verdure 

 take the place of gloom and monotony. In the dark deep valleys or 



