Voices of the Trees 187 



great and tall, many up to the shoulder ; it is a little more 

 open here, the stoles having been cut only two years ago, 

 and they draw the thistles up. 



Sometimes the young ash, shooting up after being cut, 

 takes fantastic 4 shapes instead of rising straight. The 

 branch loses its roundness and flattens out to a width of 

 three or four inches, curling round at the top like the 

 conventional scroll ornament. These natural scrolls are 

 occasionally hung up in farmhouses as curiosities. The 

 woodmen jocularly say that the branch grew in the night, 

 and so could not see its way. In some places (where the 

 poles are full-grown) the upper branches rub against each 

 other, causing a weird creaking in a gale. The trees as 

 the wind rises find their voices, and the wood is full of 

 strange tongues. From each green thing touched by its 

 fingers the breeze draws a different note : the bennets on 

 the hillside go ' sish, sish ; ' the oak in the copse roars 

 and groans ; in the firs there is a deep sighing ; the 

 aspen rustles. In winter the bare branches sing a shrill 

 ' sir-r-r.' 



The elm, with its rough leaf, does not grow in the copse : 

 it is a tree that prefers to stand clear on two sides at least. 

 Oak and beech are here ; on their lower branches a few 

 brown leaves will linger all through the winter. Where a 

 huge bough has been sawn from a crooked ill-grown oak 

 a yellow bloated fungus has spread itself, and under it, if 

 you lift it with a stick, the woodlice are crowded in the 

 rotting stump. The beech boughs seem to glide about, 

 round and smooth, snake-like in their easy curves. The 

 bark of the aspen, and of the large willow poles, looks as if 

 cut with the point of a knife, the cut having widened and 

 healed with a rough scar. On the trunk of the silver-birch 

 sometimes the outer bark peals and rolls up of itself. Seen 



