TREES AND TREE-NESTERS. 
Miss MARY L. ARMITT. 
THERE is a certain strip of woodland left to the Lake country, 
very hoar and ancient, and which is, in position and character, 
not a little singular. It lies about an old highway, which skirts 
a great scar-side at a point that may be termed the ankle-joint 
of the mountain, because there the steep foot-meadows spread 
more gently to the lake margin from the steeper fell and scree 
above. A high-road truly this way no longer is, but only a 
broad track, levelled and buttressed, showing how man in early 
days kept his line of route high and dry, and being sound of 
breath and limb, and well-nigh independent of wheels, shunned 
the bottom flats and the swamps that filled them. 
But now that he so much less propels himself by lung and 
foot, but bowls upon wheels of many kinds along the great 
high road—smooth as a ship’s deck—that traverses the well- 
drained valley, this ancient route is lonesome. The grass is 
scarce worn in its centre; the deep stone tanks that stud it— 
ancient wells that tapped the rills coursing so strangely under- 
ground (and faintly audible at places) for the refreshment of 
man and beast—are choked or empty. No one now pauses | ; 
to drink at them, and therefore no one tends them. Very 
wild and lonesome is the place. The great crag, on which 
Kestrels breed, raises a sheer head aloft, whe between it and = 
the road, on the huge boulders and shelving screes that fringe 
the scar, there is a wild growth of forest and fern. There, 
amongst rocks and piled stones, are wondrous nooks ; mossy 
chambers, screened within the debris; tiny springs, breaking 
forth and enriching all things round; seemingly inaccessible 
steepnesses clothed with green; and great old trees spreading 
gnarled roots among the rocks. 
Up and down, too, about the road, fringing it as solitary ae 
specimens, or, on gentler grassy slopes below, grouped as 
patches of unwalled woodland, are ancient trees. Like the 
road, they are reminiscent of man. At first glance they seem 
but remnants of that pristine forest that probably once clothed 
the whole of our mountain area—specimens which have sur- 
vived untouched upon unneeded rocky ground. But presently a e 
may be discerned about them signs of ancient handling and o 
ancient guardage, possibly by some common forest-rights ; and 
protection is happily now extended by a private owner, so that 
January 1899. ‘ : 
