18 FAMILIAR TREES 



These veterans, however, have a delusive air of 

 hoar antiquity from their gnarled and knotted 

 appearance, the result, for the most part, not of 

 age, but of the cruel toppings and loppings to 

 which they have been subject in the past. Like 

 those other thoroughly indigenous British trees, the 

 Holly and the Yew, the Hornbeam can be traced 

 over the whole area where it once abounded, though 

 represented now by isolated trees or small woods, 

 in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex ; but the remnants of 

 Enfield Chase, near Ware, and of Epping and 

 Theydon Garnon Forests, in Essex, tell us, in 

 their dense undergrowth of Holly and Hornbeam, 

 much of the nature of our British woodlands when 

 there were no plantations of Larch or at least in 

 southern England of Pine, and when perhaps the 

 Oak held sway undisputed even by the Beech. 



The Hornbeam, according to Sir J. E. Smith, 

 is generally "a rigid tree, of humble growth, but 

 when standing by itself, allowed to take its 

 natural form, will make a much handsomer tree 

 than most people are aware of." It does not 

 often exceed forty or fifty feet in height, or from 

 three to four feet in the girth of the trunk. A 

 carefully grown seedling, however, which has never 

 been lopped, may grow into a fine, straight- 

 stemmed, round-headed tree, seventy feet in height 

 and nine feet in circumference, resembling a 

 Beech, but having its more slender boughs com- 

 pacted into a closer outline. 



As, however, the Hornbeam is peculiarly toler- 

 ant of the pruning knife, and its branches yield 



