BUCKHURST PARK. 103 
that stand are tubes on end, with rounded knot-holes, 
loved by the birds, that let air and moisture into the 
very heart of the wood. They are hardly safe in a 
strong wind. Others again, very large and much 
shorter, have sent up four trunks from one root, a little 
like a banyan, quadruple trees built for centuries, throw- 
ing abroad a vast roof of foliage, whose green in the 
midst of summer is made brown by sacks and sacks of 
beech nuts. These are the trees to camp by, and that 
are chosen by painters. The bark of the beech is itself 
a panel to study, spotted with velvet moss brown-green, 
made grey with close-grown lichen, stained with its own 
hues of growth, and toned by time. To these add 
bright sunlight and leaf shadow, the sudden lowering of 
tint as a cloud passes, the different aspects of the day 
and the evening, and the changes of rain and dry 
weather. You may look at the bark of a beech twenty 
times and always find it different. After crossing 
Virgil’s Bridge in the deep coombe at the bottom of 
Marden Hill these great beeches begin, true woodland 
trees, and somehow more forest-like than the hundreds 
and hundreds of acres of fir trees that are called forest. 
There is another spirit among the beech trees ; they 
look like deer and memories of old English life. 
The wood cooper follows his trade in a rude shed, 
splitting poles and making hoops the year through, in 
warm summer and iron-clad winter. His shed is always 
pitched at the edge of a great woodland district. Where 
the road has worn in deeply the roots of the beeches 
hang over, twisted in and out like a giant matting, 4 
kind of cave under them. Dark yew trees and holly 
trees stand here and there ; a yew is completely barked 
on one side, stripped clean. If you look close you will 
sce scores in the wood as if made with a great nail. 
