A Gap in the Avenue. 57 



your walking-stick sharply against the black wood 

 there and it penetrates easily, and with a little push- 

 ing goes in a surprising distance ; the tree seems 

 undermined with rottenness. This decay really runs 

 up the trunk perpendicularly : look, there are signs of 

 it above at the knot-hole, thirty feet high, where more 

 fungus is flourishing, as it always does in dead damp 

 wood. The rain soaks in there, and filtrates slowly 

 down the trunk, whose very heart as it were is eaten 

 away, while outside all is fair enough. 



Presently there arises a mighty wind, the tree snaps 

 clean off twenty feet above the ground, and the upper 

 part falls, a ponderous ruin, carrying with it one of the 

 finest boughs of its nearest companion, and destroying 

 its symmetry also. When examined, it appears that 

 the trunk is totally useless as timber : this noble- 

 seeming elm is fit for nothing but fuel. Or, perhaps, 

 if there be water meadows on the estate, the farmers 

 may be glad of it to act as a huge pipe to convey the 

 fertilising stream across a ditch, or over a brook lying 

 at a lower level. For this purpose, of course, the 

 rotten part is scooped out : often the trunk is sawn 

 down the middle, so as to make a double length. 



But what a gap it has left in the great avenue ! 

 In a minute the growth of a century gone, the delight 

 of generations swept away, and no living man, hardly 



