Woods -ide. 25 



winter are really gone, that summer is fully here ? Do they 

 not bring up reminiscences of the time when we 



" Breathed forth the tender tale, 

 Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale " ? 



The name appears to have been derived from the Anglo- 

 Saxon " haga," which means " a fence " ; and " hagathorn " 

 therefore means the " fence made of thorns." This form of 

 the word appears to have been first changed to " haythorn," 

 then to hawthorn. Certainly, whether it be as a tree 

 standing alone, magnificent in foliage, and covered with 

 heavy scent-laden blossom ; whether it form a wild, unkept 

 hedge, with long trailing lower branches and massy tops ; or 

 whether it be part of a trim well-kept hedgerow, its appear- 

 ance is always welcome. 



Here is a fine tree ! How strangely the trunk is furrowed, 

 and how marvellously it appears to have been twisted. It 

 almost seems as if some giant storm had gripped the upper 

 part of the tree, twisted its trunk almost to breaking point, 

 and left it so. On this, as on the old tree hanging over the 

 pond, the mistletoe has made its home. There is not a 

 large mass of it, like those which hang from the apple trees 

 in Worcestershire and Herefordshire, but a few sprays here 

 and there, small straggling pieces coming out from cracks in 

 the bark of the tree. 



The Druidical association of the mistletoe with the oak 

 tends to leave rather an erroneous impression on the niind. 

 Here, in our Kent woods, mistletoe is very rarely found on 

 oak ; it is likewise exceedingly scarce in comparison with 

 the profusion in which it occurs in some of our western 

 counties. In some orchards in Herefordshire and Worcester- 

 shire, great plants, a couple of yards in circumference, hang 



