254 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
wall of vegetation. To push a way through the ever- 
thickening bracken becomes more and more laborious ; 
there is scarce a choice but to follow a winding 
narrow path, green with grass and moss and strewn 
with leaves, in and out and round the impenetrable 
thickets. Whither it leads—if, indeed anywhere— 
there is no sign. The precise sense of direction is 
quickly lost, and then glancing round and finding 
nothing but fern and bush and tree on every hand, 
it dawns upon the mind that this is really a forest— 
not a wood, where a few minutes either way will 
give you a glimpse of the outer light through the ash- 
poles. 
Other narrow paths—if they can be called paths 
which show no trace of human usage—branch off 
from the original one, till by-and-by it becomes 
impossible to recognize one from the other. The 
first has been lost indeed long ago, without its having 
been observed: for the bracken is now as high as the 
shoulders, and the eye cannot penetrate many yards 
on either side. Under a huge oak at last there is 
an open space, circular, and corresponding with the 
outer circumference of its branches: carpeted with 
dark green grass and darker moss, thickly strewn 
with brown leaves and acorns that have dropped from 
their cups. A wall of fern encloses it: the path loses 
itself in the grass because it is itself green. 
Several such paths debouch here—which is the 
right one to follow? It is pure chance. On again, 
