TREES AND SHRUBS 121 



earthy lair that lies in the midst of bushes are wind-clipped, round, and 

 those close-set stems. And in the stunted in their growth ; but within 

 heart of May, when the bluebell beds the sheltering curves of the smooth, 

 were purest and deepest at the fringe unbroken hills, or where they yield 

 of the larger thickets, the pink-flushed one another mutual support in a 

 clusters of wild apple bloom seemed denser thicket beside some wind-break- 

 to answer in vernal gladness from the ing thorn, they shoot forth in loose, 

 boughs above. All through spring and feathery sprays of an inimitably grace- 

 early summer these open, broken thick- ful wildness. In early summer the 

 ets are riotous with the life of blossom young shoots of the year are frosted 

 and bird ; and nowhere else do we with a silvery bloom that brightens 

 seem to come so close to the greenwood their dark evergreen boughs with an 

 of early England, or feel so sure, with austere and tender freshness, a beauty 

 reason, that the scene with all its sun- wholly in accord with the restrained 

 shine, colour and song is the same simplicity of the unbroken curves of 

 which woke their English music from the great chalk downs ; and this same 

 the hearts of Chaucer and Shakespeare puritan contrast of .dark and silvery 

 long ago. hues is presented by most other of the 

 Never is there such a varied and dominant tree-growths of the chalk, 

 characteristic growth of the lesser trees Black yews stand dotted on the hill, 

 and shrubs as among the brushwood or massed in overshadowing thickets 

 and thickets that dot the sides of the where the rabbits tunnel in the white 

 great chalk downs, or form the open, soil at their roots ; and silvery white 

 rambling, half-wild hedges of their against their slopes of gloom, long 

 lower slopes and fringes. Most typical wreaths of the wild chalk-loving cle- 

 of all the downland bushes is the dark, matis shake out their downy seed- 

 evergreen juniper, that still flecks many beards in the clear October sunshine, 

 of the steeper slopes of thyme-scented Pale, too, in every ruffling breeze 

 sward with its dappled, primaeval upon the down stand out the way- 

 growth as thickly as the clouds in a faring tree, or mealy guelder-rose, and 

 mackerel sky, or the white forms of the its brother, the taller white-beam, with 

 pasturing sheep that roam among its its white-backed leaves more deeply 

 own darker archipelagoes. On the toothed and lobed ; in days with 

 more exposed hillsides the juniper- a long, even wind they dwell for hours 



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