NOVEMBER, 1881. 97 



not been strong enough to support more than one or two 

 there, and the others have died down ; the wood conse- 

 quently thickens with the increasing power of the branch, 

 and a fresh lot of buds crop out over it and grow to a 

 certain length of twig, a proportion again dying down, 

 and aggravating the original habit of expanding the knot 

 by multiplication of twigs. The result is a congeries of 

 twigs dead and alive, interminably interlaced around a 

 thickening stem, and a bundle of exaggerated bud- 

 bearers. Here are two conterminous birches, veterans 

 of their race, the one graceful and delicately drooping as 

 a birch should be, the other stiff and knuckly all over 

 its branches, even to the furthest rigid, ungraceful twig. 

 There is not a single " bunch " of twigs upon it. Yet 

 its stem and its branches have surrounded themselves 

 with a continually increasing aggregation of excrescences, 

 in the shape of knots, that become hard and finely 

 grained, and, when " skinned " and polished, make 

 beautiful ornaments. This peculiarity of the woody fibre 

 seems quite to have absorbed the extra vitality of the 

 tree, and, while the twigs and branches are alike 

 foreshortened, it is free from the other deformity. The 

 appearance of the two against the sky is so dissimilar 

 that they could scarcely be recognised as the same 

 species. 



We come upon a magnificent silver that has fallen to 

 Tuesday's gale (the 22nd), falling with its forked stem on 

 either side of a large beech, and stripping it of branches 

 until brought up tightly wedged. It is impossible to 

 separate them, and they must go together. The enor- 

 mous roots of the silver have stretched far, but they 

 have been completely undermined by the rabbits, and 

 these have unquestionably weakened the hold of the giant 



G 



