202 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



whose names are synonymous with wealth can get 

 anything to equal it if they ransack the earth. 



After these, fill every nook and corner with hazel, 

 and make filbert walks. Up and down such walks 

 men strolled with rapiers by their sides while our 

 admirals were hammering at the Spaniards with 

 culverin and demi-cannon, and looked at the sun- 

 dial and adjourned for a game at bowls, wishing that 

 they only had a chance to bowl shot instead of 

 peaceful wood. Fill in the corners with nut-trees, 

 then, and make filbert walks. All these are like old 

 story books, and the old stories are always best. 



Still, there are others for variety, as the wild 

 guelder rose, which produces heavy bunches of red 

 berries ; dogwood, whose leaves when frost-touched 

 take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly 

 acid fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting 

 the elder, but putting it at the outside, because, 

 though flowering, the scent is heavy, and because 

 the elder was believed of old time to possess some of 

 the virtue now attributed to the blue gum, and to 

 neutralise malaria by its own odour. 



For colour add the wild broom and some furze. 

 Those who have seen broom in full flower, golden to 

 the tip of every slender bough, cannot need any 

 persuasion, surely, to introduce it. Furze is specked 

 with yellow when the skies are dark and storms sweep 

 around, besides its prime display. Let wild clematis 

 climb wherever it will. Then laurels may come after 

 these, put somewhere by themselves, with their thick 

 changeless leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one 

 ever gathejs a spray. 



