INTRODUCTORY. 1 1 



species. On the eastern boundary of the park there is 

 a long row of fine trees, chiefly beech and lime, and in 

 one of the former this tendency is strikingly shown, for 

 there are at least twenty places where the boughs have 

 crossed each other and become perfectly united. In 

 some of these the opening formed by the junction is 

 only large enough to receive the hand, whilst in others a 

 person might almost creep through ; indeed it seems as 

 if two boughs could scarcely touch each other without 

 uniting. 



I have seen this tendency exhibited in the beech and 

 elm, though I never met with it in the oak, and but 

 once in the Scotch fir ; this last, however, is a very 

 remarkable example, for it is not the mere junction of 

 two boughs of the same tree, but the actual union of 

 two distinct trees. These trees stand in a wood called 

 the "Catwins," not far from the road leading from 

 Thoresby to Clumber. The largest grows with a 

 straight clean trunk about two feet in diameter, while 

 two feet from it grows another smaller tree of equally 

 clean growth of twelve inches diameter. At the height 

 of about four feet the latter bends at an obtuse angle 

 towards the larger tree until at six feet from the ground 

 it touches it, when the two form a perfect junction, com- 

 bining into one straight, round stem, without any seam 

 to indicate the point of union. The whole has a very 

 singular appearance, the smaller tree looking exactly 

 like a flying buttress placed to support the other. 



In some tracts of the forest the oaks are replaced by 

 thorn trees of great size and age, and almost every one 

 bearing in abundance that peculiar parasite the mistletoe; 

 plentiful as it is on the hawthorn, I never met with it 

 on the oak, and perhaps it may have been its rarity on 



