BUCK HURST PARK. 103 



that stand are tubes on end, with rounded knot-holes, 

 loved by the birds, that let air and moisture into the 

 very heart of the wood. They are hardly safe in a 

 strong wind. Others again, very large and much 

 shorter, have sent up four trunks from one root, a little 

 like a banyan, quadruple trees built for centuries, throw- 

 ing abroad a vast roof of foliage, whose green in the 

 midst of summer is made brown by sacks and sacks of 

 beech nuts. These are the trees to camp by, and that 

 are chosen by painters. The bark of the beech is itself 

 a panel to study, spotted with velvet moss brown-green, 

 made grey with close-grown lichen, stained with its own 

 hues of growth, and toned by time. To these add 

 bright sunlight and leaf shadow, the sudden lowering oi 

 tint as a cloud passes, the different aspects of the day 

 and the evening, and the changes of rain and dry 

 weather. You may look at the bark of a beech twenty 

 times and always find it different. After crossing 

 Virgil's Bridge in the deep coombe at the bottom of 

 Marden Hill these great beeches begin, true woodland 

 trees, and somehow more forest-like than the hundreds 

 and hundreds of acres of fir trees that are called forest. 

 There is another spirit among the beech trees ; they 

 look like deer and memories of old English life. 



The wood cooper follows his trade in a rude shed, 

 splitting poles and making hoops the year through, in 

 warm summer and iron-clad winter. His shed is always 

 pitched at the edge of a great woodland district. Where 

 the road has worn in deeply the roots of the beeches 

 hang over, twisted in and out like a giant matting, a 

 kind of cave under them. Dark yew trees and holly 

 trees stand here and there ; a yew is completely barked 

 on one side, stripped clean. If you look close you will 

 see scores in the wood as if made with a great nail. 



