AMONG THE OAKS 101 



supplies of timber of different sizes at each return 

 of the fall to any given copse. This was easily 

 explainable. As Percival Lewis remarks of the 

 New Forest about ninety years ago, * The rabbit, 

 in his pursuit of food did much injury, and the 

 cutting of browse wood ' (for feeding the royal 

 deer), ' as it was carried on in former times, must 

 have been attended with considerable depreda- 

 tions ; the holly and the thorn are often the 

 preservers of the seedling oak.' The same applies 

 to-day to a great many good oak-producing dis- 

 tricts. In the self-sown woods of Sussex, some 

 friendly furze bush has often been the guardian 

 angel of many a seedling now grown into a stout 

 and sturdy sapling or pole. The consequence is 

 that in most of our copse woods the standard trees 

 are not more or less regularly distributed over 

 the area, and there is no regular gradation in 

 the ages of the standard trees forming the over- 

 wood. Again, many of the oak trees, with large 

 spreading branches, have been allowed to remain 

 long after completing their main growth and 

 thus attaining their marketable maturity. Yet 

 the beautiful old oak trees that have endured 

 from generation to generation in woods owned 



