ENGLISH WOODS: A CONTRAST 41 



but found it like the others, without any distinctive 

 woodsy attraction — only so much soil covered with 

 dripping beeches, too dense for a park and too tame 

 for a forest. The soil is a greasy, slippery clay, 

 and down the steepest part of the hill, amid the 

 trees, the boys have a slide that serves them for 

 summer "coastings." Hardly a leaf, hardly a twig 

 or branch, to be found. In White's time, the poor 

 people used to pick up the sticks the crows dropped 

 in building their nests, and they probably do so 

 yet. When one comes upon the glades beyond the 

 Hanger, the mingling of groves and grassy common, 

 the eye is fully content. The beech, which is the 

 prevailing tree here, as it is in many other parts of 

 England, is a much finer tree than the American 

 beech. The deep limestone soil seems especially 

 adapted to it. It grows as large as our elm, with 

 much the same manner of branching. The trunk 

 is not patched and mottled with gray, like ours, 

 but is often tinged with a fine deep green mould. 

 The beeches that stand across the road in front of 

 Wordsworth's house, at Rydal Mount, have boles 

 nearly as green as the surrounding hills. The bark 

 of this tree is smooth and close-fitting, and shows 

 that muscular, athletic character of the tree beneath 

 it which justifies Spenser's phrase, "the warlike 

 beech." These beeches develop finely in the open, 

 and make superb shade-trees along the highway. 

 All the great historical forests of England — Shrews- 

 bury Forest, the Forest of Dean, New Forest, etc. 

 — have practically disappeared. Eemnants of them 



