Coppices. 85 



them six feet or so in length, straight and beautifully 

 regular, tapering, like a fine fishing-rod top, with a 

 grey greenish dusty lustre upon them, which they 

 lose when they develop branches in their second year. 

 It is these yearling hazel twigs, taken just where they 

 fork with each other, which are used for divining 

 purposes ; and my friend to whom this wood belongs, 

 though a very practical man, is inclined to believe 

 there is something in it. Held in a horizontal position 

 by the skilled operator, they tremble and vibrate, and 

 dip downward when right over springs, however deep.* 

 The hazel stems or twigs lose their sensitiveness and 

 power in indicating the presence of springs when they 

 have grown older, but are profitable for thatching and 

 other purposes. There are many groups of stubs of 

 ash and alder much in request in the making of 

 hurdles and such purposes. My friend tells me that 

 in well-arranged and well-kept woods, with partially 

 open spaces, free or comparatively free from larger 

 trees, where these can be grown successfully, the yield 

 is more profitable than that of arable land, amounting 

 to something like j or even ^8 an acre, so that 

 woods are not only ornamental but profitable ; here, 

 as in so many other things, beauty and use going 

 hand-in-hand together. Here and there we see, 



* This, too, it may be remarked, is one of the Yew points on which 

 De Quincey was not quite accurate. In his note on " Rhabdomaney," 

 to "Opium Confessions," p. 291 (Masson's edition), he writes: "The 

 remedy is to call in a set of local rhabdomantists [to divine for water]. 

 These men traverse the adjacent ground, holding the willow rod 

 horizontally. Wherever that dips or inclines itself spontaneously to 

 the ground, there will be found water ; " and the same thing is repeated 

 in " Modern Superstition." The willow may be used, but the hazel is 

 the usual, and is accepted as the more powerful medium. De Quincey, 

 like my friend, though on definite Baconian principles, was inclined to 

 believe there " was something in it." 



