10 The Neiv Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



boughs, strained and tortured as they are in this very Forest, as 

 nowhere else in England, by the Channel winds.* Consider, 

 too, Nature's own love and tenderness for her trees, how, when 

 they have grown old and are going to decay, she clothes them 

 with fresh beauty, hides their deformities with a soft green veil of 

 moss and the grey dyes of lichens, and, not even content with 

 this, makes them the support for still greater loveliness drapes 

 them with masses of ivy, and hangs upon them the tresses of 

 the woodbine, loading them to the end of their days with sweet- 

 ness and beauty. 



All this, and far more than this, you may see in the com- 

 monest woods round Lyndhurst, in Sloden, in Mark Ash, or 

 Bratley. 



Then, too, there is that perpetual change which is ever going 

 on, every shower and gleam of sunshine tinting the trees with 

 colour from the tender tones of April and May, through the 

 deep green of June, to the russet-red of autumn. Each season 

 ever joins in this sweet conspiracy to oppress the woods with 

 loveliness. 



Taking, however, a more special view, and looking at the 

 district itself, we must remember that it is situated on the 

 Middle-Eocene, and presents some of the best features of 

 the Tertiary formation. Its hills may not be high, but they 

 nowhere sink into tameness, whilst round Fordingbridge, and 

 Goreley, and Godshill, they resemble, in degree, with their 

 treeless, rounded forms, shaggy with heath and the rough sedge 



* In the lower part of the Forest, near the Channel, the effect is 

 quite painful, all the trees being strained away from the sea like 

 Tennyson's thorn. It is the Usnea barbata which covers them, especially 

 the oaks, with its hoary fringe, and gives such a character to the whole 

 Forest. 



