34 



remarked in his " Forest Scenery," " What is more beautiful, for 

 instance, in a rugged foreground than an old tree with a hollow- 

 trunk, or with a dead arm, a drooping bough, or a dying branch P" 

 in fact, grotesque, knotted, blasted, and weather-beaten trees are 

 the charm of forest scenery, and give it a peculiar character. 



Though the Maple is now not so esteemed and regarded as it was 

 in olden times, and is thought little of as a timber tree, yet it well 

 deserves preservation in parks where it has grown unmutilated, and 

 there makes a respectable, if not dignified figure, as a low bushy 

 tree, while its branches contribute to give it a rugged character on 

 close inspection. It is called the common or field Maple (Acer 

 campestre, Linn.) to distinguish it from the great Maple, or Syca- 

 more, and is now chiefly observable in the bounding hedges of old 

 lanes and hollow-ways, where, however, it seldom escapes hacking 

 and thus becomes a deformed object. As Selby observes in hia 

 " History of British Forest Trees,"" In the south of England the 

 Maple is very rarely planted or treated as a tree, and, therefore, 

 seldom to be seen in that form, for, growing principally in hedges or 

 copse woods, it is regularly cut over and treated as a bush, like other 

 shrubs of inferior growth, such as the hazel, blackthorn, &c. 

 Though indigenous in the south and midland counties, it does not 

 extend to the most northern, or to Scotland, neither has it been found 

 in Ireland." 



The Maples in Sherborne Park present specimens of many fine 

 large trees, evidently of considerable age, for the Maple is a slow- 

 growing tree, of great endurance. One of these, hollow and par- 

 tially despoiled by tempestuous winds, measures twelve feet in 

 girth at three feet from the ground, and two others have attained 

 the dimensions of ten feet in girth. I have depicted Csee woodcut) 

 a very remarkable half-up-rooted and declining Maple, with very 

 knobby and tortuous arms, that measures fifteen feet round its base, 

 having a mass of roots that have been forced out of the ground, 

 though with suflicient persistence to prevent the tree from becoming 

 prostrate. I measured this very curious Maple in company with Mr. 

 Darell Stephens, who lay at its base while my sketch was made. 

 There are many other Maples in Sherborne Park, forming masses of 

 dense foliage, and some of them rising to a height of between forty 

 and fifty feet. One very antique-looking tree that I have here 

 figured makes a singularly grotesque object from its half denuded 

 state, very knotty trunk, and bare, extended, tortuous arms. This is 



