England.
The New Forest.
1909.
Aug 19-23
(No 8)
The New Forest is far wilder and more impressive than I
had pictured it. Nowhere in America, save in Western North Carolina
and in the Wabash River bottoms, have I seen such noble trees.
The oaks and beeches surpass in size and vigor any that we
have in New England and there are tens of thousands of them
of the largest size. They are crowded and tall in places, in others
wide apart and spreading, with long lower branches. As a rule
they have broad, dome-shaped heads very unlike those of any
of our New England trees and their foliage is wonderfully dense
and perfect and of a deeper, darker green than that of usual
American trees. Beneath them the ground may be perfectly open
and nearby strewn with dead leaves or so cumbered with
dense undergrowth, chiefly of prickly holly, that it is difficult
to walk one's way for any considerable distance save by means 
of some obscure deer or cattle trail. The latter condition
is quite as common as the former & indeed characteristic
of immense tracts of forest. There are many swamps,
dense with every kind of shrubbery and threaded by sluggish
winding brooks. Throughout the forest are innumerable open
spaces varying in size from pretty little grassy to tracts,
hundreds of acres in extent, covered with grass or with
purple heather of two kinds, not in bloom. The deciduous forest trees
are chiefly oaks, beeches (heavily loaded with ripening mast just now)
and birches, with now and then an ash, a hornbeam (like
our Carpinus) or a chestnut (with leaves and burrs smaller
than those of our trees). There are many wild apple trees, too,
widely scattered & similar in every way to ours. Of the
evergreens, these are the holly, (everywhere abundant & indigenous
no doubt), the Scotch Pine (forming extensive forests all
plentiful, I suppose), the Austrian Pine (less common) the Norway
Spruce and the Larch (both comparatively scarce & evidently introduced).