TREES ABOUT TOWN 177 



The very brambles are superior ; there is the flower, the 

 sweet berry, and afterwards the crimson leaves three 

 things in succession. 



What can the world produce equal to the June rose ? 

 The common briar, the commonest of all, offers a flower 

 which, whether in itself, or the moment of its appearance 

 at the juncture of all sweet summer things, or its history 

 and associations, is not to be approached by anything a 

 millionaire could purchase. The labourer casually gathers 

 it as he goes to his work in the field, and yet none of the 

 rich families 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 ; dog- 

 wood, 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, 



M 



