WINTER IN WEST DOWNLAND 289 



In Chapter XII. I have said not a httle about 

 the arborescent vegetation characteristic of the West 

 Sussex Downs ; and I trust the reader will pardon me 

 if I go back to that subject here. At Chilgrove there 

 is a wood which, seen at a distance, looks almost as 

 uniformly dark as the famous yew grove at Kingly 

 Bottom ; but although the yew abounds greatly in it 

 and the trees are well grown, throwing out immense 

 horizontal branches near the ground, giving it that 

 dark and sombre aspect, it is on a nearer view found 

 to be composed of all the trees and bushes character- 

 istic of the chalk downs — yew, beech, holly, thorn, 

 juniper, furze, and wild clematis. It grows on the 

 side, near the top, of a long, steep, hanger-like hill, 

 and overhangs the Chilgrove vale. A wilder and more 

 beautiful wood of that peculiar type found only 

 among the west Sussex Downs I had never seen. 

 Most of it was an almost impenetrable thicket and 

 tangle, and in the open spaces the foot sank deep in 

 the thick growth of softest moss. Here were the 

 largest furze and juniper bushes I have seen in Sussex, 

 the junipers being, some of them, poplar and cypress 

 shaped, and others with wide-spreading branches, 

 looking like yews of a lively green. Some were 

 fifteen to eighteen feet high, with a girth of two to 

 three feet ; and some of the yew-shaped bushes had 

 branches six to eight feet in length. Here I observed 

 that the great masses of black-green yew-tree foliage 



formed a wonderfully effective background to the 



T 



