56 The Gamekeeper at Home, 



lengthened with the declining sun and gave such 

 pleasant shelter from the heat. Soon, however, if the 

 rising generation of trees is thus cut down, they must 

 become bare, open, and unlovely. 



There is another mistake, often committed by 

 owners of timber, who go to the other extreme, and 

 in their intense admiration of trees refuse to permit 

 the felling of a single one. Now in the forest or the 

 woodlands, away from the park or pleasure-grounds, 

 the old hollow trees are things of beauty, and to cut 

 them down for firewood seems an act of vandalism. 

 But it is quite another thing with an avenue or those 

 groups which dot the surface of a park. Here, if a 

 tree falls and there is no other to take its place, a gap 

 is the result, which cannot be filled up, perhaps, under 

 fifty or sixty years. 



Let any one stroll along beneath a stately avenue 

 of elm or beech, such as are not difficult to find in 

 rural districts, and are the pride and boast — and justly 

 so — of this country, and, examining the trees with 

 critical eye, what will he see ? Three or four elms, 

 I will say, are passed, and are evidently sound ; but 

 the fifth — a careless observer might go by it without 

 remarking anything unusual — is really rotten to the 

 centre. At the foot of the huge trunk, and growing 

 out of it, is a bunch of sickly-looking fungi. Thrust 



