e-chestnut, whose boughs, untouched by
cattle, come sweeping down to the ground, and then, continuing, seem to
lie on and extend themselves along it, yards beyond their contact.
Underneath, it reminds one of sketches of encampments in Hindostan
beneath banyan trees, where white tent cloths are stretched from branch
to branch. Tent cloths might be stretched here in similar manner, and
would enclose a goodly space. Or in the boughs above, a savage's
tree-hut might be built, and yet scarcely be seen.

My roaming and uncertain steps next bring me under a plane, and I am
forced to admire it; I do not like planes, but this is so straight of
trunk, so vast of size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose
but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper bough, makes off as
I glance up. But the trees constantly afford unexpected pleasure; you
wander among the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the trees
which the Red Indian haunts, now by those which grow on Himalayan
slopes. The interest lies in the fact that they are trees, not shrubs or
mere saplings, but timber trees which cast a broad shadow.

So great is their variety and number that it is not always easy to find
an oak or an elm; there are plenty, but they are often lost in the
foreign forest. Yet every English shrub and bush is here; the hawthorn,
the dogwood, the wayfaring tree, gorse and broom, and here is a round
plot of heather. Weary at last, I rest again near the Herbaceous Ground,
as the sun declines and the shadows lengthen.

As evening draws on, the whistling of blackbirds and the song of
thrushes seem to come from everywhere around. The trees are full of
them. Every few moments a blackbird passes over, flying at some height,
from the villa gardens and the orchards without. The song increases; the
mellow whistling is without intermission; but the shadow has nearly
reached the wall, and I must go.

TREES ABOUT TOWN

Just outside London there is a circle of fine, large houses, each
standing in its own grounds, highly rented, and furnished with every
convenience money can supply. If any one will look at the trees and
shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house, chosen at random for
an example, and make a list of them, he may then go round the entire
circumference of Greater London, mile after mile, many days' journey,
and find the list ceaselessly repeated.

There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, araucarias, laurels, plane