APRIL 14 T 



their timber, but hacked ii off level with the ground. Perhaps, 

 however, they did this in order to cause it to throw up a bush of 

 undergrowth. At least that is what must have happened, and 

 afterwards, on the occasions of successive cuttings of the fell, 

 gradually the growths were thinned out to a single sapling, which, 

 spared from decade to decade, went on until at last it became a 

 timber. 



What interests me in this tree is that I had no idea a stub oak 

 — that is to say, an oak growing upon roots which have done duty 

 for a predecessor — would increase to such a size. I knew that 

 it is quite possible and a common practice to re-grow blue-gums 

 in this fashion, the child tree becoming as large and as vigorous 

 as its parent, but that the oak would succeed even to a moderate 

 extent under such treatment was new to me. 



The ways of trees, however, are often very curious. Thus, 

 last autumn, when shooting on the Ditchingham Hall estate, I saw 

 with regret that a great bough had been torn off a famous beech 

 which grows there. Going to examine it, I found that the first frac- 

 ture was of ancient standing, but that to support and nurture' itself 

 the injured bough had put out roots from its torn surface, some 

 of them as much as an inch in diameter, which were feeding on 

 the leaf mould and decayed wood collected in a fork below the 

 break. I have frequently seen this kind of aerial root emission 

 in the case of tropical trees, especially in the tierra caliente of 

 Mexico, but never before in trees of English growth ; although it is 

 common enough to find one seedling tree flourishing upon another 

 of a different variety, sometimes indeed growing to a respectable size. 



To-day we have been harrowing the three-acre new pasture, 

 No. II, and sowing on it a good coat of clover seed saved from 

 that which I grew at Bedingham last year. This is the process : 

 Fairhead, with the new steel chain-drag set to cut its deepest, 

 harrows the pasture crossways, to scatter as evenly as possible the 

 ' tether ' left by the sheep, which, it will be remembered, have been 

 I)enned upon this field, and to disturb any moss that may remain 

 after their treading. Even this harrowing requires care, since the 



