little cloud of powdery particles. The
scaly bark takes a ruddy tinge, when the sunshine falls upon it, and
would then, I think, be worthy the attention of an artist as much as
the birch bark, whose peculiar mingling of silvery white, orange, and
brown, painters so often endeavour to represent on canvas. There is
something in the Scotch fir, crowned at the top like a palm with its
dark foliage, which, in a way I cannot express or indeed analyse,
suggests to my mind the far-away old world of the geologists.

In the boughs of the birch a mass of twigs sometimes grows so close
and entangled together as to appear like a large nest from a distance
when the leaves are off. Even as early as December the tomtits attack
the buds, then in their sheaths, of the birch, clinging to the very
extremities of the slender boughs. I once found a young birch growing
on the ledge of a brick bridge, outside the parapet, and some forty or
fifty feet from the ground. It was about four feet high, quite a
sapling, and apparently flourishing, though where the roots could find
soil it was difficult to discover.

The ash tree is slowly disappearing from many places, and owners of
hedgerow and copse would do well to plant ash, which affords a most
useful wood. Ash poles are plentiful, but ash timber gets scarcer year
by year; for as the present trees are felled there are no young ones
rising up to take their place. Consequently ash is becoming dearer, as
the fishermen find; for many of the pleasure yachts which they let out
in summer are planked with ash, which answers well for boats which are
often high and dry on the beach, though it would not do if always in
the water. These beach-boats have an oak frame, oak stem and
stern-post, beech keel, and are planked with ash. When they require
repairing, the owners find ash planking scarce and dear.

Trees may be said to change their garments thrice in the season. In
the spring the woods at Okebourne were of the tenderest green, which,
as the summer drew on, lost its delicacy of hue. Then came the second
or 'midsummer shoot,' brightening them with fresh leaves and fresh
green. The second shoot of the oak is reddish: there was one oak in
the Chace which after midsummer thus became ruddy from the highest to
the lowest branch; others did not show the change nearly so much.
Lastly came the brown and yellow autumn tints.

CHAPTER II.

CICELY. THE BROOK.

In the kitchen at Lucketts' Place ther