PURPLE PATCHES 237 



are even in the middle of such industrial and often ugly 

 scenes as the German Ruhr, where the trees are grown 

 wholly to supply pit props. &quot; The oak and the ash and 

 the bonny ivy tree/ of a singularly English song, take a 

 second place to the beech ; and yet the palm perhaps 

 must be refused even to the Wycombe beech woods, 

 however finely tilted to catch the shifting light. There 

 are more variable, more English, scenes that give the 

 most memorable pleasure to our travellers in beauty. I 

 would put first those avenues or corridors where walls 

 and roofs are composed of a mingled arras of red and 

 brown and yellow and green above, on either side, 

 beneath the feet and even in the air when the leaves float, 

 with the wayward droop of a butterfly, in a cornerwise 

 passage down the mild west wind. One such is com 

 posed of oak and elm and beech on one side and a tall 

 hedge of thorn and holly on the other. Every traveller 

 by road finds himself continually in such corridors, espe 

 cially perhaps in the Home Counties. One of the love 

 liest within my memory is known as Dark Entry, between 

 Pangbourne and Bradfield in Berkshire. 



You must go northwards, perhaps best to Westmor 

 land, to discover that the ground may rival the colours 

 of the wood in October as in March, the month of 

 gorse blossom, or August when ling and heather are 

 purple ; but North America so excels us in ground 

 colours, bright and various as any Eastern aspect, that 

 even the Lakes must be a little paled. He who has seen 

 the sumachs, and climbing ampelidae among the maples, 

 among the firs, beeches, pears, cherries, poplars, and 

 guelders and the rest on the slopes of Lake Erie or on 

 the river banks of Austria will confess this supremacy as 

 he hears admiration of our woods or even of our parks, 

 however vivid with wild cherry, with Norwegian maples, 



