290 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



feathery foliage of the juniper, a bright but very 

 deHcate glaucous green. 



On the edge of this wood I found that curiosity 

 in plant life — a perfect wild clematis tree. As a rule 

 when a thorn tree, robbed of light and air by a too 

 luxuriant clematis spread over it, perishes and finally 

 crumbles to dust, the semi-parasite dies after it, being 

 unable to keep itself up, or to live when prostrate 

 on the earth. Occasionally, however, it does succeed 

 in keeping off the ground for a time, but in most 

 cases it has a widowed, forlorn appearance, swayed 

 about this way and that on its too slender stem, its 

 head bowed down, and the long attenuated twigs 

 drooping like loosened hair to the earth. Here is a 

 clematis that has a different aspect, with a round, 

 straight, and shapely trunk, twenty-seven inches in 

 circumference; its height is eighteen feet, and its 

 innumerable fine pendulous branches give it the 

 appearance of a weeping-willow tree. At the end of 

 January when I saw it, it was still clothed in down 

 as with a silver-grey fluffy foliage. 



On the north escarpment of the downs, at this 

 point, there are some fine yew groves and woods in 

 the deep combes and hollows and ravine-like clefts in 

 the sides of the hills. The finest of these is on the 

 north side of the great down west of West Dean 

 woods. Here, in the side of the hill, there is an 

 immense basin-shaped combe, its sloping circular sides 

 covered with a dense dark growth of yews, and under 



