6 Armitt: Trees and Tree-Nesters. 
these aged monarchs may live out the small remnant of their 
lives in peace. They are Oak trees mostly, interspersed by 
a few Ash and Cherry trees; and shrubs of Hazel, Holly, 
Thorn, and Rowan crowd among them; while the Yew trees 
that here and there cling to the naked scar are far above 
the general line of woodland. Some of the trees have reached, 
by an undeterred growth, the height and expanse possible in 
- these shallow soils, stretching wide arms from a stout main 
trunk. But t many again, more especially upon certain patches, 
Oar eros and i oe as they are—by their disposal of 
limb to trunk, traces of man’s axe, wielded long ago. 
In the days of their youth, long, long ago, when wood was 
the only fuel obtainable except peat, and man’s dwellings were 
roofed with timber grown at hand, these trees would seem to 
have been lopped, or pollarded, at a distance of from 8 to 14 ft. 
above the ground. The tree, then, having lost its main stem, 
threw its arrested growth into several great converging limbs. 
_In some few instances, these limbs were again lopped at a point 
- considerably higher, and clearly at a date long subsequent, so 
_ that from the short, thick trunk there now branch, first, four or 
_ five vast, rugged elbows, and from these again spring, rocket- 
: like, a shower of slender stems. ! 
Very weird and fantastic in shape are the trees of this wood- 
land, even down to the Hollies and the Thorns. So twisted and 
_ writhing in form are they, so knotted and gnarled at the joints, 
_ that they recall the pencil of Gustave Doré, who drew no 
_ stranger forms than theirs ; for the older they grow the weirder 
do they become. As decrepitude sets in, the massive elbows, 
: ees a, and riven at the joint by rain and humus, and growing 
things that collect therein, snap off, sometimes splitting the 
_ whole trunk downwards with their fall. Finally, the central 
trunk alone is left, a weird and crumbling tower of timber, to rot 
ag Ivy wraps it round perhaps ina eae ay 
ngside, 
and like a pennon — above the ruin a fictitious crown o 
"green. 
a All sorts of things live wad: grow upon these aging Oaks. 
f Besides lichen on the slender twigs above, and moss of several 
en TE 1S: poillible that some few of these trees may have been maimed by 
_ Nature. Several fine young Oak trees hereabouts lost their main stems 
the superincumbent weight collected by sks leaves. An early snow, before 
has — does much — to t 
