17 SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



Romans in old times, as in his own time and country ; 

 therefore, and from the form of the leaf, he calls it the 

 Yoke Elm. He recommends the wood for arrows and 

 shafts, and observes that it grows so hard and tough with 

 age as to be more like horn than wood, and that for this 

 reason it was called Hornbeam or Hardbeam. Evelyn 

 says, it was termed Horse-beech, from the resemblance 

 of the leaf to that of the beech tree ; from which, how- 

 ever, it is very different. The beech leaf narrows, some- 

 what like an egg, towards the foot-stalk ; whereas the 

 leaves of the Hornbeam and of the elm are broader to- 

 wards that end than the other. There is otherwise much 

 similarity in all these leaves, as also in the birch leaf, but 

 that it is smaller. The name of Witch-hazel is peculiar 

 to Essex ; the tree commonly called by that name is the 

 broad-leaved Elm, also named Wych Elm. 



The German husbandman has a peculiar mode of 

 erecting a fence of Hornbeam ; he plants the young trees 

 in such a manner as that every two may be brought to 

 intersect each other in the form of a St. Andrew's cross ; 

 in the part where they cross, he scrapes off the bark, and 

 binds them closely together with straw ; the two plants 

 thus connected form a sort of indissoluble knot, and push 

 from thence horizontal slanting shoots which form a living 

 palisado : a rural fortification, as Dr. Hunter terms it. 

 These hedges being annually and skilfully pruned, will in 

 a few years become a fence impenetrable in every part. 

 It is not uncommon to see high roads in Germany thus 

 fenced for miles together. 



Evelyn observes, that before the entries of many of the 

 great towns in Germany they plant clumps of these 

 trees, " to which they apply timber frames for the con- 

 venience of the people to sit and solace in." 



