8o THE PINE AND HEATHER COUNTRY 



the groves of Mark-Ash are to the beech-woods of the 

 New Forest, the climax of an ascending scale of sylvan 

 beauty, produced by the gradual and natural advance 

 to perfection of a single species of tree, in a setting which 

 varies in degree of beauty, but not in general features. 

 What the charm of this pine-forest must have been, 

 before it was discovered and inhabited, can only be con- 

 jectured, though the first care of the settlers has been to 

 preserve the trees, so far as the construction of roads 

 and houses allows, and their further felling is forbidden 

 by the strictest obligations of leases, and the enforcement 

 of local regulations against wanton burning and injury. 

 It is a fact that the cross-bill, the rarest and shyest of 

 the birds of the Northern forest, still breeds in the 

 Bournemouth woods ; and the ground is covered by 

 half-gnawed cones flung down by the squirrels, which 

 build their nests on the very verge of the cliffs. The 

 trees in the oldest and thickest woods are not the 

 Scotch fir, or the ragged spruce, which cover so much of 

 the so-called " pine districts," but true Western pines, 

 flat-topped and straight-stemmed, with a crown of up- 

 curved branches, studded with masses of heavy cones, 

 full of seed, and as prolific as on the shores of the 

 Mediterranean. Many of these trees are more than 

 a century old, and cover cliff and glen alike with 

 high vistas of tall grey stems, lightly roofed by the 

 intersections and multiplied upward curves of the 

 branches which lace the sky, but admit both air and 

 light to the ground below. Thus, in the oldest woods, 

 though the mass of falling pine-needles makes the 



