ENGLISH WOODS : A CONTRAST. 45 



covered with dripping beeches, too dense for a park 

 and too tame for a forest. The soil is a greasy, slip- 

 pery clay, and down the steepest part of the hill, 

 amid the trees, the boys have a slide that serves them 

 for summer " coastings." Hardly a leaf, hardly a 

 twig or branch, to be found. In White's time, the 

 poor people used to pick up the sticks the crows 

 dropped in building their nests, and they probably do 

 so yet. When one comes upon the glades beyond 

 the Hanger, the mingling of groves and grassy com- 

 mon, the eye is fully content. The beech, which is 

 the prevailing tree here, as it is in many other parts 

 of England, is a much finer tree than the American 

 beech. The deep limestone soil seems especially 

 adapted to it. It grows as large as our elm, with 

 much the same manner of branching. The trunk is 

 not patched and mottled with gray, like ours, but is 

 often tinged with a fine deep green mould. The 

 beeches that stand across the road in front of Words- 

 worth's house, at Rydal Mount, have boles nearly as 

 green as the surrounding hills. The bark of this 

 tree is smooth and close-fitting, and shows that mus- 

 cular, athletic character of the tree beneath it, which 

 justifies Spenser's phrase, " the warlike beech." These 

 beeches develop finely in the open, and make superb 

 shade-trees along the highway. All the great histor- 

 ical forests of England Shrewsbury Forest, the 

 Forest of Dean, New Forest, etc. have practically 

 disappeared. Remnants of them remain here and 

 there, but the country they once occupied is now es- 

 sentially pastoral. 



