88 My Wood. 



This charm compelled the ash to be not only friendly, 

 but to surrender its charm for protection and aid. 



The fateful powers of trees, too, more particularly 

 the ashes, are fabled to be more active by night than 

 by day; and in a wood at night, when not only the 

 " tranced senators of mighty woods," but the smallest 

 plant and bush, seem to whisper mysteriously, there 

 is no room to wonder at this, though, perhaps, it was 

 only an old-world way of signifying that nature in 

 none of her phases of activity ever sleeps. 



And nature truly knows no death. See how the ivy 

 has made a pillar of the stump of that old pollarded 

 willow, that shows something of grace even in its 

 lopped and desolate condition, with something like a 

 ring of rubies round the outer edge of the stump — the 

 first signs of the new shoots that by-and-by will adorn 

 it. Nature's secret is to transform all decay and dis- 

 location into new beauty ; and, as she runs through 

 the cycle of the year, to cover up, soften, smooth 

 down, and to weave a glory round all disorder and 

 dismemberment and death. At the foot of certain of 

 the trees later on will grow the loveliest of fungi, that 

 sometimes contest their right with ground ivy and 

 wood sorrel — fungi of the most beautiful colours : pearl- 

 coloured, fawn, purply-pink, and flesh-coloured. Not 

 edible ; ah ! no : they are rankly poisonous mostly, 

 these agaric children of the woods, and their radiant 

 colours are only put on to warn. 



Often as I have moved along here at different 

 seasons I have noticed on a branch a little patch of 

 glimmering pearl-like lustre, just as though some one 

 had set a jewel there, which had been made by a 

 very skilful artist, some fourteen or fifteen spiral rows 

 running from the centre outwards. You go and touch 



