The Xeic Forest : it* History <in<l its 



too, Nature's own love and tenderness for her trees, bow, 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 for more than this, you may see in the com- 

 monest woods round Lyndburst, 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 a more special view, and looking at the district itself, 

 we -must remember that it is situated on the Upper and Middle - 

 Eocene, and presents all the best features of the Tertiary forma- 

 tion. Its hills may not be high, but they nowhere sink into 

 tameness, whilst round Fordingbridge, and Goreley, and Gods- 

 hill, they resemble, in degree, with their treeless, rounded forms, 

 shaggy with heath and the rough sedge of the fern, parts of the 

 half-mountainous scenery near the Fifeshire Lomonds.* 



On the sea-coast near Milton, rise high gravel-capped cliffs, 



* The reader must bear in mind that the word '-forest" is here used, 

 as it is always throughout the district, in its primitive sense "foresta 

 est tuta ferarum mansio," " statio ferarum." (See Dufresne on the word 

 "foresta.") And the moors and plains are so called, though there may not 

 be a single tree growing upon them, 



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