3 S NATURE NEAR LONDON 



By one corner of the copse there is an oak, hollow 

 within, but still green and flourishing. The hollow is 

 black and charred ; some mischievous boys must have 

 lighted a fire inside it, just as the ploughboys do in the 

 far away country. A little pond in the meadow close by 

 is so overhung by another oak, and so surrounded with 

 bramble and hawthorn, that the water lies in perpetual 

 shade. It is just the spot where, if rabbits were about, 

 one might be found sitting out on the bank under the 

 brambles. This overhanging oak was broken by the 

 famous October snow, 1880, further splintered by the 

 gales of the next year, and its trunk is now split from 

 top to bottom as if with wedges. 



These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, and in 

 one part the meadow-orchis flourishes. The method of 

 making cowslip balls is universally known to children, 

 from the most remote hamlet to the very verge of London, 

 and the little children who dance along the green sward 

 by the road here, if they chance to touch a nettle, at 

 once search for a dock leaf to lay on it and assuage the 

 smart. Country children, and indeed older folk, call 

 the foliage of the knotted figwort cutfinger leaves, as 

 they are believed to assist the cure of a cut or sore. 



Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the copse ; 

 the fruit is doubtless eaten by the birds. Troops of them 

 come here, travelling along the great hedge by the way- 

 side, and all seem to prefer the outside trees and bushes 

 to the interior of the copse. This great hedge is as 

 wide as a country double mound, though it has but 

 one ditch ; the thick hawthorn, blackthorn, elder, and 

 bramble the oaks, elms, ashes, and firs form, in fact, 

 almost a cover of themselves. 



In the early spring, when the east wind rushes with 

 bitter energy across the plains, this immense hedge, as 





