256 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



mind that this is really a forest not a wood, where 

 a few minutes either way will give you a glimpse of 

 the outer light through the ash-poles. 



Other narrow paths if they can be called paths 

 which show no trace of human usage branch off 

 from the original one, till by-and-by it becomes im- 

 possible to recognize one from the other. The first 

 has been lost, indeed, long ago; without its having 

 been observed ; for the bracken is now as high as 

 the shoulders, and the eye cannot penetrate many 

 yards on either side. Under a huge oak at last there 

 is an open space, circular, and corresponding with the 

 outer circumference of its branches ; carpeted with 

 dark-green grass and darker moss, thickly strewn 

 with brown leaves and acorns that have dropped from 

 their cups. A wall of fern encloses it : the path 

 loses itself in the grass because it is itself green. 



Several such paths debouch here which is the right 

 one to follow ? It is pure chance. On again, with 

 more tall bracken, thorn thickets, and maple bushes^ 

 and noting now the strange absence of living things. 

 Not a bird rises startled from the boughs, not a rabbit 

 crosses the way ; for in the forest, as in the fields, 

 there are places haunted and places deserted, save by 

 occasional passing visitors. Suddenly the bracken 

 ceases, and the paths disappear under a thick grove 

 of beeches, whose dead leaves and beech-mast seem 

 to have smothered vegetation. 



Insensibly the low ground rises again, the brake and 

 bushes and underwood reappear, but the trees grow 



