NOVEMBER 151 



with a man's full strengtli, fall on tlie heads of the 

 great u-on wedges. 



Some thinning of birch-trees has to be done in 

 the lowest part of the copse, not far from the house. 

 They are rather evenly distributed on the ground, 

 and I wish to get them into groups by cutting away 

 superfluous trees. On the neighbom'ing moorland and 

 heathy uplands they are apt to grow naturally in 

 groups, the individual trees generally bending out- 

 ward towards the free, open space, the whole group 

 taking a form that is graceful and highly pictorial. 

 I hope to be able to cut out trees so as to leave the 

 remainder standing in some such way. But as a tree 

 once cut cannot be put up again, the condemned ones 

 are marked with bands of white paper right round 

 the trunks, so that they can be observed from all 

 sides, thus to give a chance of reprieve to any tree 

 that from any point of view miay have pictorial value. 



Frequent in some woody districts in the south of 

 England, though local, is the Butcher's Broom {Buscus 

 aculeatus). Its stiff green branches that rise straight 

 from the root bear small, hard leaves, armed with a 

 sharp spine at the end. The flower, which comes in 

 early summer, is seated without stalk in the middle of 

 the leaf, and is followed by a large red berry. In 

 country places where it abounds, butchers use the 

 twigs tied in bunches to brush the little chips of 

 meat off their great chopping-blocks, that are made 

 of solid sections of elm trees, standing three and a half 



