288 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



appear to consist of one vast forest. Of the hamlet 

 not far distant there is nothing visible but the white 

 wall of a cottage, perhaps, shining in the sun, or the 

 pale blue smoke curling upwards. This wooded ap- 

 pearance is caused by timber trees standing in the 

 hedgerows, in the copses at the corners of the mead- 

 ows, and by groups and detached trees in the middle 

 of the fields. 



Many hedges are full of elms, some have rows of 

 oaks ; some meadows have trees growing so thickly 

 in all four hedges as to seem surrounded by a timber 

 wall ; one or two have a number of ancient spreading 

 oaks dotted about in the field itself, or standing in 

 rows. But there are not nearly so many trees as 

 there used to be. Numerous hedges have been 

 grubbed to make the fields larger. 



Within the last thirty years two large falls of timber 

 have taken place, when the elms especially were thrown 

 wholesale. The old men, however, recall a much 

 greater " throw," as they term it, of timber, which 

 occurred twice as long ago. Then before that they 

 have a tradition that a still earlier " throw " took 

 place, when the timber chiefly went to the dock- 

 yards for the building of those wooden walls which 

 held the world at bay. These traditions go back, 

 therefore, some, eighty or a hundred years. One field 

 in particular is pointed out where stood a double 

 row or avenue of great oaks leading to nothing but 

 a farmstead of the ordinary sort, of which there is 

 not the slightest record that it ever was anything but 



