THE NATURAL MAN 255 



ripe underwood, laying it in rows or " lands," who sorts 

 out and makes it up into bundles for firewood. But 

 bundle is not a term recognised in this craft. It may 

 be a faggot, a puff, a knitch, a bavin. A single county 

 may employ all these terms for a withy-bound bundle 

 of firewood, but what is a puff in one group of woods 

 or one district in the county may be faggot or bavin 

 in the next. That faggot maker who has worked all 

 his life in the copse has an intimacy with wood which 

 we cannot get through print or intelligent inquiry. 

 He knows to a nicety the fuel value of each kind of 

 tree and underwood in his copse. He can tell the 

 right amount of exposure to weather which his cut 

 woods should have, so that they may make the 

 brightest fire. He can tell the difference between 

 the white birches and the black for other purposes 

 than those of fuel; he has a sure eye for hop poles, 

 young underwoods fit for crates, tough and older 

 underwoods that may be used for rough fencing 

 work. But, after all, the faggot means firewood, and 

 next to the sheep hurdle the faggot must remain the 

 chief product of the ordinary oak, hazel, ash, and birch 

 underwoods of England. Serious, then, is the revolu- 

 tion which hi many places has almost abolished the 

 bundle of large and small firewood mixed. Even in 

 outlying villages hawkers of coal drive a small trade, 

 and the new grate is little fitted for underwood fuel or 

 the lop and top of trees. What fire is so comforting 

 and cheerful as one of wood well-seasoned ash and 



