JUNE 127 



avenues. This is the time of year, when the great 

 trees stand girt to the feet with bluebells or rise from 

 feathery undulations of fern, to visit those vestiges 

 of our English forests which are scattered over the 

 country, chiefly from the Midlands to the Channel. 

 The majority of them are now enclosed within park 

 wall or fence, but are none the less survivals of the 

 old England of the smokeless skies and the merry 

 greenwood, when 



In the boyhood of the year, 



Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere 



Rode through the coverts of the deer, 



or when again, in Sherwood's glades, 



The wood-wele sange and wode not cease, 



Sittynge upon a spraye, 

 So Ioude he wakened Robin Hood, 



On the greenswarde where he laye. 



The " woodwele" is of course the Green Woodpecker. 

 A forester born, he wears the lincoln-green, and his 

 jocund shout rings full and mellow on the ear in every 

 well-timbered district, whether it be amongst the great 

 hedge-row elms of Warwickshire, the noble beeches of 

 Buckinghamshire or the sturdy oaks which love so 

 well the clay soil of the Weald. Such oaks, which may 

 well have seen their prime in Shakespeare's day, still 

 cast their shade upon the windings of the placid 

 Avon. 



