FOREST

The beechnuts are already falling in the forest, and the swine are

beginning to search for them while yet the harvest lingers. The nuts

are formed by midsummer, and now, the husk opening, the brown angular

kernel drops out. Many of the husks fall, too; others remain on the

branches till next spring. Under the beeches the ground is strewn with

the mast as hard almost to walk on as pebbles. Rude and uncouth as

swine are in themselves, somehow they look different under trees. The

brown leaves amid which they rout, and the brown-tinted fern behind

lend something of their colour and smooth away their ungainliness.

Snorting as they work with very eagerness of appetite, they are almost

wild, approaching in a measure to their ancestors, the savage boars.

Under the trees the imagination plays unchecked, and calls up the past

as if yew bow and broad arrow were still in the hunter's hands. So

little is changed since then. The deer are here still. Sit down on the

root of this oak (thinly covered with moss), and on that very spot it

is quite possible a knight fresh home from the Crusades may have rested

and feasted his eyes on the lovely green glades of his own unsurpassed

England. The oak was there then, young and strong; it is here now,

ancient, but sturdy. Rarely do you see an oak fall of itself. It decays

to the last stump; it does not fall. The sounds are the same--the tap

as a ripe acorn drops, the rustle of a leaf which comes down slowly,

the quick rushes of mice playing in the fern. A movement at one side

attracts the glance, and there is a squirrel darting about. There is

another at the very top of the beech yonder out on the boughs, nibbling

the nuts. A brown spot a long distance down the glade suddenly moves,

and thereby shows itself to be a rabbit. The bellowing sound that comes

now and then is from the stags, which are preparing to fight. The swine

snort, and the mast and leaves rustle as they thrust them aside. So

little is changed: these are the same sounds and the same movements,

just as in the olden time.

The soft autumn sunshine, shorn of summer glare, lights up with colour

the fern, the fronds of which are yellow and brown, the leaves, the

grey grass, and hawthorn sprays already turned. It seems as if the

early morning's mists have the power of tinting leaf and fern, for so

soon as they commence the green hues begin to disappear. There are

swathes of fern yonder, cut down like grass or corn, the harvest of the

forest. It will be used for litter and for thatching sheds. The yellow

stalks--the stubble--will turn brown and wither through the winter,

till the strong spring shoot conies up and the anemones flower. Though

the sunbeams reach the ground here, half the green glade is in shadow,

and for one step that you walk in sunlight ten are in shade. Thus,

partly concealed in full day, the forest always contains a mystery. The

idea that there may be something in the dim arches held up by the round

columns of the beeches lures the footsteps onwards. Something must have

been lately in the circle under the oak where the fern and bushes

remain at a distance and wall in a lawn of green. There is nothing on

the grass but the upheld leaves that have dropped, no mark of any

creature, but this is not decisive; if there are no physical signs,

there is a feeling that the shadow is not vacant. In the thickets,

perhaps--the shadowy thickets with front of thorn--it has taken refuge

and eluded us. Still onward the shadows lead us in vain but pleasant

chase.

These endless trees are a city to the tree-building birds. The round

knot-holes in the beeches, the holes in the elms and oaks; they find

them all out. From these issue the immense flocks of starlings which,

when they alight on an isolated elm in winter, make it suddenly black.

From these, too, come forth the tits, not so welcome to the farmer, as

he considers they reduce his fruit crop; and in these the gaudy

woodpeckers breed. With starlings, wood-pigeons, and rooks the forest

is crowded like a city in spring, but now in autumn it is comparatively

deserted. The birds are away in the fields, some at the grain, others

watching the plough, and following it so soon as a furrow is opened.

But the stoats are busy--they have not left, nor the weasels; and so

eager are they that, though they hide in the fern at first, in a minute

or two they come out again, and so get shot.

Like the fields, which can only support a certain proportion of cattle,

the forest, wide as it seems, can only maintain a certain number of

deer. Carrying the same thought further, it will be obvious that the

forest, or England in a natural state, could only support a limited

human population. Is this why the inhabitants of countries like France,

where they cultivate every rood and try to really keep a man to a rood,

do not increase in number? Certainly there is a limit in nature which

can only be overcome by artificial aid. After wandering for some time

in a forest like this, the impression arises that the fauna is not now

large enough to be in thorough keeping with the trees--their age and

size and number. The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a

longer list of living creatures, and creatures of greater bulk. The

stoat and weasel are lost in bramble and fern, the squirrels in the

branches; the fox is concealed, and the badger; the rabbit, too, is

small. There are only the deer, and there is a wide gap between them

and the hares. Even the few cattle which are permitted to graze are

better than nothing; though not wild, yet standing in fern to their

shoulders and browsing on the lower branches, they are, at all events,

animals for the time in nearly a natural state. By watching them it is

apparent how well the original wild cattle agreed with the original

scenery of the island. One almost regrets the marten and polecat,

though both small creatures, and wishes that the fox would come forth

more by day. These acres of bracken and impenetrable thickets need more

inhabitants; how well they are fitted for the wild boar! Such thoughts

are, of course, only thoughts, and we must be thankful that we have as

many wild creatures left as we have.

Looking at the soil as we walk, where it is exposed by the roots of a

fallen tree, or where there is an old gravel pit, the question occurs

whether forests, managed as they are in old countries, ever really

increase the fertility of the earth? That decaying vegetation produces

a fine mould cannot be disputed; but it seems here that there is no

more decaying vegetation than is required for the support of the trees

themselves. The leaves that fall--the million million leaves--blown to

and fro, at last disappear, absorbed into the ground. So with

quantities of the lesser twigs and branches; but these together do not

supply more material to the soil than is annually abstracted by the

extensive roots of trees, of bushes, and by the fern. If timber is

felled, it is removed, and the bark and boughs with it; the stump, too,

is grubbed and split for firewood. If a tree dies it is presently sawn

off and cut up for some secondary use or other. The great branches

which occasionally fall are some one's perquisite. When the thickets

are thinned out, the fagots are carted away, and much of the fern is

also removed. How, then, can there be any accumulation of fertilising

material? Rather the reverse; it is, if anything, taken away, and the

soil must be less rich now than it was in bygone centuries. Left to

itself the process would be the reverse, every tree as it fell slowly

enriching the spot where it mouldered, and all the bulk of the timber

converted into fertile earth. It was in this way that the American

forests laid the foundation of the inexhaustible wheat-lands there. But

the modern management of a forest tends in the opposite direction--too

much is removed; for if it is wished to improve a soil by the growth of

timber, something must be left in it besides the mere roots. The

leaves, even, are not all left; they have a value for gardening

purposes: though, of course, the few cartloads collected make no

appreciable difference. There is always something going on in the

forest; and more men are employed than would be supposed. In the winter

the selected elms are thrown and the ash poles cut; in the spring the

oak timber comes down and is barked; in the autumn the fern is cut.

Splitting up wood goes on nearly all the year round, so that you may

always hear the axe. No charcoal-burning is practised, but the mere

maintenance of the fences, as, for instance, round the pheasant

enclosures, gives much to do. Deer need attention in winter, like

cattle; the game has its watchers; and ferreting lasts for months. So

that the forest is not altogether useless from the point of view of

work. But in so many hundred acres of trees these labourers are lost to

sight, and do not in the least detract from its wild appearance.

Indeed, the occasional ring of the axe or the smoke rising from the

woodman's fire accentuates the fact that it is a forest. The oaks keep

a circle round their base and stand at a majestic distance from each

other, so that the wind and the sunshine enter, and their precincts are

sweet and pleasant. The elms gather together, rubbing their branches in

the gale till the bark is worn off and the boughs die; the shadow is

deep under them, and moist, favourable to rank grass and coarse

mushrooms. Beneath the ashes, after the first frost, the air is full of

the bitterness of their blackened leaves, which have all come down at

once. By the beeches there is little underwood, and the hollows are

filled ankle-deep with their leaves. From the pines comes a fragrant

odour, and thus the character of each group dominates the surrounding

ground. The shade is too much for many flowers, which prefer the nooks

of hedgerows. If there is no scope for the use of "express" rifles,

this southern forest really is a forest and not an open hillside. It is

a forest of trees, and there are no woodlands so beautiful and

enjoyable as these, where it is possible to be lost a while without

fear of serious consequences; where you can walk without stepping up to

the waist in a decayed tree-trunk, or floundering in a bog; where

neither venomous snake not torturing mosquito causes constant

apprehensions and constant irritation. To the eye there is nothing but

beauty; to the imagination pleasant pageants of old time; to the ear

the soothing cadence of the leaves as the gentle breeze goes over. The

beeches rear their Gothic architecture, the oaks are planted firm like

castles, unassailable. Quick squirrels climb and dart hither and

thither, deer cross the distant glade, and, occasionally, a hawk passes

like thought.

The something that may be in the shadow or the thicket, the vain,

pleasant chase that beckons us on, still leads the footsteps from tree

to tree, till by-and-by a lark sings, and, going to look for it, we

find the stubble outside the forest--stubble still bright with the blue

and white flowers of grey speedwell. One of the earliest to bloom in

the spring, it continues till the plough comes again in autumn. Now

looking back from the open stubble on the high wall of trees, the touch

of autumn here and there is the more visible--oaks dotted with brown,

horse chestnuts yellow, maples orange, and the bushes beneath red with

haws.