Wind-harassed Trees 23 



look now from the top of the rampart over the rolling hills, 

 the idea is difficult to admit at first. They are apparently 

 bare, huge billowy swells of green, with wide hollows 

 cultivated on the lower levels, but open and unenclosed for 

 mile after mile, almost without hedges, and seemingly tree- 

 less save for the gnarled and stunted hawthorns — appa- 

 rently a bare expanse ; but more minute acquaintance leads 

 to different conclusions. 



Here, to begin with, on the same ridge as the earth- 

 work and not a quarter of a mile distant, is a small clump 

 of wind-harassed trees, growing on the very edge. They 

 are firs and beech, and, though so thoroughly exposed to 

 furious gales, have attained a fair height even in that thin 

 soil. Beech and fir, then, can grow here. Away yonder 

 on another ridge is another such a clump, indistinct from 

 the distance : though there is a pleasant breeze blowing 

 and their boughs must sway to it, they appear motionless. 

 With the exception of the poplar, whose tall top as it slowly 

 bends to the blast describes such an arc as to make its 

 motion visible afar, the most violent wind fails to enable 

 the eye to separate the lines of light coming so nearly 

 parallel from the branches of an elm or an oak, even at a 

 comparatively short distance. The tree looks perfectly still, 

 though you know it must be vibrating to the trunk and 

 loosening the earth with the wrench at its anchoring 

 roots. 



In more than one of the deep coombes there is a row 

 of elms — out of sight from this post of vantage — whose 

 tops are about level with the plain, where you may stand 

 on the edge and throw a stone into the rook's nest facing 

 you. On a lower spur, which juts out into the valley, is a 

 broad ash wood. Little more than a mile from hence, on 

 the most barren and wildest part of the down, there yet 



