Armitt: Trees and Tree-Nesters. 7 
kinds upon the bark of stalwart branch and trunk, where rain 
and mist will filter down, and fungoid growths of many a kind, 
there is Polypody fern growing in every hollow, gash, or rent; 
the Broad Boss fern springing here and there in crevices, as 
well as Wood-Sorrel and many another little flowering weed; — 
and seedling trees, Mountain Ash, Holly, Hazel, or Silver Birch, 
sprouting from the cracks. These little seedling trees may be | 
detected by their stripling-like straightness, where they shoot 
aloft from the aged boughs, two and three—nay, even six, e 
: am told by the woodman—upon one tree, up and up to the ; 
top. Nor are the lodger-trees all striplings. Looking through 
the woodland in the last week of April, while the Oak trees are 
bare of leaf and show their centres, we pass tree after tree, | 
bearing aloft a lodger, stalwart and strong, dark with its cloud 
of Holly leaves, or bright with the new verdure of the Mountain | 
Ash. In the hollow of the crown of the Oak, some ro to 15 ft. 
above the ground—for there only, where moisture lingers, and 
a little soil doubtless is formed from blown dust and leaves 
and fern-root, can real growth be obtained—does the lodger sit, 
stout and strong, reaching up boughs sometimes to a height 
little short of those of its host-tree. Sometimes there are twin- 
lodgers in a tree. 
One Sycamore tree, sound and in its prime, holds both a Hazel _ 
Bush and a Rowan; an Oak carries two stout Hollies ; another 
Oak two stout Hollies and a Rowan. In this last instance the 
size of the lodgers is so surprising that I got the woodman to — 
measure them. Fe 
Girth of main stem where it springs 
from the tap of the oak. Height. 
st Holly i 1o inches co o> Beet: 
2nd Holly ” ae ee 
ehidene 27 ae 
_ th ¢ . ? ; 
branched and top-heavy, that it had split down the oak on one © 
side, and had toppled over. But still it clung to its foothold on the | 
knees of the giant—for there, indeed, it was securely rooted, and ay 
thence it derived nourishment. It lay across, its upper branches 
leaning against the steeply-sloping ground, and was neither — 
vanquished nor dead; it was then (26th April 1896) not only — 
green with leaves, but was preparing a lusty show of flowers. _ 
_ The Oak, smashed though its branches all were, and its trunk 
rent on the side of the ral, lived, too, on the other side, ae 
eet 1899. 
