88 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
one of the most beautiful and poetic objects in 
sylvan scenery. 
It would, indeed, be sacrilege to lay the axe 
to the roots of the aged monarchs of many a 
park and chase, the last survivors of stately trees 
coeval with those which Tennyson describes so 
graphically in The Foresters, when Robin Hood, 
addressing Maid Marian, crowned with an oaken 
chaplet as Queen of the Wood, invites her to 
« Sit here by me, where the most beaten track 
Runs through the forest, hundreds of huge oaks, 
Gnar]’d—older than the thrones of Europe—look, 
What breadth, height, strength—torrents of eddying bark! 
Some hollow-hearted from exceeding age— 
That never be thy lot or mine !—and some 
Pillaring a leaf-sky on their monstrous boles, 
Sound at the core as we.’ 
But in the woods themselves it is a different 
matter. Here a beauty of utility can often quite 
easily be allied closely with beauty of form, for 
Forestry on business principles is not synonymous 
with the spoiling of sylvan scenery. The shapely 
stem and the well-formed crown of branches and 
foliage of oak standards grown properly in copse- 
woods, are no less lovely in their own way than 
huge-limbed, rugged trees which are allowed to 
