A WOOD RAMBLE IN APRIL 23 



It is a poisonous plant, and one must beware of getting 

 it into a garden, so insidious and persistently invading 

 is its running root. 



Where the undergrowth is not cut down at the 

 usual few years' interval, every now and then one 

 comes upon an old Hazel with a trunk six inches 

 thick, or perhaps with a sheaf of five or six thick 

 stems. It is only when one sees it like this that 

 one recognises that it is quite one of the most 

 graceful of small trees. The stems have a way of 

 spreading outward and arching from the very base, 

 forming a nearly true segment of a shallow circle. 

 The bark becomes rough after three years' growth, 

 but before that age, except for a thin scurf of 

 papery brown flakes, relics of an earlier skin, it is 

 smooth and half polished, the colour varying from 

 grey-green to a cool umber, with bands and clouds 

 of a silvery quality. 



It is difficult to believe that we are well into 

 April, the season is so backward, with frosty nights 

 and winds that appear to blow equally cold from 

 all quarters. To-day the wind comes from the south, 

 though it feels more like north-east. How cold it 

 must be in northern France ! Coming back through 

 the fir wood, the path is on the whole well sheltered, 

 yet the wind reaches me in thin thready little 

 chilly draughts, as if arrows of cold air were being 

 shot from among the trees. The wind-blown firs 

 in the mass have that pleasant sound that always 



