IN A SUSSEX HANGER 



LET us at any rate call it a hanger till some learned 

 person who has made hangers a speciality puts us to 

 rights. We have more than a suspicion that this term 

 is too generally used. Gilbert White's hanger ran to 

 the top of a hill, whereas ours is mostly in the hollow, 

 and its highest bank can scarcely be called a hill. 

 Gilbert White's eminence was covered altogether with 

 beech, " the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we 

 consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or 

 graceful, pendulous boughs." But we have never 

 heard the name given colloquially in Surrey or Sussex 

 to a wood of timber trees. 



First your rough ground given over to Sylvia bristles 

 with young scrub. The brambles begin to be subdued 

 with shoots of oak, ash, sycamore, and all manner of 

 self-sown trees. The rods attain ten or twelve feet in 

 length, and the beater-up of pheasants forces his way 

 through them with difficulty. The place becomes a 

 hanger. Then your best suited trees smother out the 

 others, the trunks swell and lengthen, but the space 

 for walking becomes more liberal. We have a carpet 

 of dead leaves and lofty architraves carrying bright 

 green. For a hundred years or so it is to be a forest. 

 Then we cut down the trees, and everywhere between 

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