THE HOLLY. 463 



when work is scarce and penury fast increasing, the holly tree is 

 doomed to suffer from the lawless pilferer's hand. When least 

 expected, you find it arrested in its growth. Its smaller branches 

 by degrees lose their vitality, and, by the end of the following year, 

 one half of the tree appears as though it had received a blast from 

 the passing thunder-storm. This declining aspect of the holly has 

 been occasioned by the hand of sordid mischief. It is well known 

 that birdlime is produced from its bark. In the spring of the year, 

 at earliest dawn of day, our finest holly trees in this neighbourhood 

 are stripped of large pieces of their bark by strolling vagabonds, who 

 sell it to the nearest druggist. So common has this act of depreda- 

 tion been in this vicinity, that I should be at loss to find a single 

 holly tree, in any hedge outside of the park wall, that has escaped 

 the knife of these unthinking spoilers. 



Some six or seven years ago, there stood in the ornamented grounds 

 of my baronet neighbour a variegated holly of magnificent growth, 

 and it bore abundant crops of berries, a circumstance not very fre- 

 quent in hollies of this kind. Many a half hour have I stood to 

 admire this fine production of nature, for it was unparalleled, in this 

 part of Yorkshire, in beauty, size, and vigour. But, at last, it was 

 doomed to perish by a plundering and an unknown hand. One 

 morning in spring I found the whole of its bark stripped off the bole 

 for full two feet in length. Notwithstanding this disaster, the berries 

 became ripe in due time ; whilst its leaves apparently retained their 

 wonted verdure upon the greater branches. Even the year follow- 

 ing it was alive, and put forth new leaves and blossoms ; but the 

 leaves were of a stinted growth, and the berries did not attain their 

 usual size. During the course of the third year from the day of its 

 misfortune, the whole of the foliage fell to the ground, and then the 

 tree itself became, like our giant debt, a dead unsightly weight upon 

 the land 



