DECEMBER 161 



with axe or mattock close to the butt, and again 

 about eighteen inches away, so that by degrees a 

 deep trench, eighteen inches wide, is excavated round 

 the butt. A rope is fastened at the right distance 

 up the trunk, when, if the tree does not hold by a 

 very strong tap-root, a succession of steady pulls wiU 

 bring it down; the weight of the top thus helping 

 to prise the heavy butt out of the ground. We come 

 upon many old stumps of Scotch fir, the remains 

 of the original wood; they make capital firewood, 

 though some burn rather too fiercely, being full of 

 turpentine. Many are still quite sound, though it 

 must be six-and-twenty years since they were feUed. 

 They are very hard to grub, with their thick tap- 

 roots and far-reaching laterals, and stUl tougher to 

 spUt up, their fibres are so much twisted, and the 

 dark-red heart-wood has become hardened till it 

 rings to a blow almost like metal. But some, whose 

 roots have rotted, come up more easily, and with 

 very little digging may be levered out of the ground 

 with a long iron stone-bar, such as they use in the 

 neighbouring quarries, putting the point of the bar 

 under the "stam," and having a log of wood for a 

 hard fulcrum. Or a stout young stem of oak or 

 chestnut is used for a lever, passing a chain under 

 the stump and over the middle of the bar and prising 

 upwards with the lever. " Stam " is the word always 

 used by the men for any stump of a tree left in the 

 ground. 



