100 SYLVAN WINTER. 



boughs are wtitened by snow. The Beech -boles 

 are gracefully and beautifully twisted and turned, 

 and through a snowy, sylvan fretwork of branches 

 we look down upon the country below. 



The sun, near its setting, is tipping the clouds 

 with fiery glory. The scattered snow throws 

 out into relief the green of the meadows and 

 the darker forms of leafless trees. A few 

 steps further on and a view from another point 

 over hill and valley is obtained ; and then, 

 dipping under a green tunnel formed by over- 

 arching, evergreen foliage, and passing between 

 a Yew on one side, and a mossy-boled, mossy- 

 limbed and beautiful Oak on the other, with 

 gnarled and twisted limbs and boughs, we come 

 the next instant upon another outlook upon the 

 landscape beneath us, succeeded by yet another 

 through a screen formed by the wintry branches 

 of Beech trees, which raise their leafless heads 

 aloft over the dwarfer forms of Box and Tew. 

 By our side an Oak claims attention by the vivid 

 greenness and beauty of its mossy bole, silvered 

 by incrusting patches of lichen — by its seamed and 

 rugged bark, and its gnarled and twisted limbs. 



