THE GREEN WORLD 219 



After our Hampshire yews, our Hampshire beeches. 

 We specialise in them, and grow them to perfection on 

 our grand chalk hangers. 



It was a foolish discovery which gravely made up a 

 list of the seven wonders of the world, as if in every 

 field and wood in May there were not seventy wonders 

 as great as Niagara ! The change and growth of the 

 beech-tree twig is one of the wonders. Through the 

 winter and the early weeks, indeed months, of spring, 

 the beech was spiked almost like the wild rose or 

 blackthorn. Its buds were rolled and compressed 

 tight as tight could be, and each ended in a point not 

 quite so needle fine as that of a rose or holly leaf, but 

 as hard. The compression was so great that it was not 

 easy to realise that each beech thorn held even one 

 beech leaf. So it continued through much of April ; 

 when, from being one of the hardest, driest, thinnest 

 of tree things, the beech thorn began to swell and 

 soften and to lose its sharp point. In March it 

 appealed to the eye and thought as matter about as 

 lifeless as any part of a living tree may be ; one day in 

 May we might hesitate to pluck a twig of beech tree, 

 the life and feeling permeating it seemed so quick. 



The beech thorn bulging and at length bursting, 

 one is amazed to find it matters not that one found 

 it the same last May, for these miracles have 

 perennial youth that a single bud often holds not 

 a single leaf, but four or five leaves, together with 

 a tassel of bloom; leaf and bloom in babyhood, yet 



