Bourlon Wood

“ But as the harvest ripens beneath the long, hot days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, as you approach the vicinity of his nest, oscillating between anxiety for his brood and solicitude for his musical reputation. ”

“ Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty varieties of these summer visitants, many of the common to other woods in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find so large a number abiding in one forest,—and that not a large one,—most of them nesting and spending the summer there. ”

“ Somewhat less than a week ago, whilst I was wandering along the road by the side of a wood, I came to a place where some peasants were engaged in cutting up and clearing away a confused mass of fallen timber: a mighty aged oak had given way the night before, and in its fall had shivered some smaller trees ”

“ Both boys turned to find Louis Woodhull, who, walking with the noiseless step of the forest ranger, had come upon them unawares.
“There’s a lot of chips around the wood-pile, Billy, and cook wants them right now, so trot along, son,” he continued.
“Doctor told me to look out for Upton,” protested Billy.
“Upton is quite equal to taking care of himself, from all I hear,” said Louis drily. “Wood-pile’s waiting for a good, strong, able-bodied forester who knows woodcraft, one of the first essentials of which is knowledge of how to swing an axe. ”

“ The wood we scraped together was a sorry lot, roots and stumps and branches of decayed spruce, such as we could collect without an axe, and some rags and tags of birch bark. The fire was built in one corner of the shanty, the smoke finding easy egress through large openings on the east side and in the roof over it. We doubled up the bed, making it thicker and more nest-like, and as darkness set in, stowed ourselves into it beneath our blankets. The searching wind found out every crevice about our heads and shoulders, and it was icy cold. ”

“ The Glan-yr-Afon wood is a fickle, changeable place; like a vain woman, it is always taking off one garment and putting on another. Three months ago, when the April woods were piping to it, it had on a mist-blue cloak of hyacinths—what could be prettier?—but now it has laid it aside, and is all tricked out in gay grass, green, flecked here and there with rosy families of catch-fly and groups of purple orchis spires. ”

“ Isopel was seated near the fire, over which the kettle was now hung; she had changed her dress—no signs of the dust and fatigue of her late excursion remained; she p. 371had just added to the fire a small billet of wood, two or three of which I had left beside it; the fire cracked, and a sweet odour filled the dingle.
“I am fond of sitting by a wood fire,” said Belle, “when abroad, whether it be hot or cold; I love to see the flames dart out of the wood; but what kind is this, and where did you get it?”
“It is ash,” said I, “green ash. ”

“ The Gordon River pine is the most valuable of the enormous growth of timber in proximity to its banks; a beautiful, soft, red wood, not unlike the cedar of Australia. It can be split into excellent palings and will, fortunately, burn well, either in a wet or dry state. The dense undergrowth, closely intertwined with climbers, renders it impossible even for a man to get through, unless with an axe to clear his way before him. And the locally named “horizontal scrub” is a study in forestry. ”

“ The wood on the other side of the road to Bury Wood, called in the map Woodman’s Glade, has not suffered from felling, and stands as an object lesson to show how unnecessary such felling is. It is one of the thickest parts of the forest, and looks in all respects like such woods were forty years ago, the growth of the heads of the hornbeams being but slow; but there is no difficulty in getting through it in all directions, and it has a peculiar charm of its own not to be found in any other forest ”

“ Stimulated by ceaseless rain it hid even the surface of the ground from the pedestrian’s view. For centuries, the unimpeded brush-wood beneath the gigantic forest trees, which, shooting upwards for hundreds of feet, combined by their topmost interlacing of branches to exclude the sunlight, had fallen rotted, and formed a superincumbent mass, through which the traveller, passing over a filled up gully, once falling through the upper platform, 180so to speak, might sink to unknown depths. ”

“ Back at camp Big Jim at once started preparations for dinner. Going into the woods he cut a small log of hard wood about two feet long, out of which he split a slab about three inches thick. One side of this he rapidly smoothed. Under his direction Walter had, in the meantime, built a fire of small pieces of hard wood. This was soon a bed of glowing coals which would retain their heat for a long time, a property which soft woods do not possess, as the guide took pains to impress upon him. For this reason hardwood coals are always preferable for cooking. ”

“ The grass was high and thick affording feed for her horse and a bed for herself and there was more than enough dead wood lying about the trees to furnish a good fire well through the night. Removing the saddle and bridle from her mount she placed them at the foot of a tree and then picketed the animal close by. Then she busied herself collecting firewood and by the time darkness had fallen she had a good fire and enough wood to last until morning. ”

“ Hornbeam has neither smell nor taste. It burns well, the embers glowing brightly in still air. The weight of a cubic foot of seasoned wood is fifty-one pounds. It is strong, hard, heavy, tough, and exceedingly durable when exposed to variable weather, or when in contact with the soil. It takes a beautiful polish. Trees more than a foot in diameter are often found to be hollow.
The wood is strong, hard, tough, durable in contact with the soil; heartwood light brown, tinged with red, or often nearly white; thick, pale sapwood which generally does not change to heart for forty or fifty years. ”

“ It is remarkable,’ he added, as though he were politely parrying her thought, ‘how invisible one is on these bare green hillsides.’
‘Or in these thick brown woods,’ said Laura, rather sternly.
This sort of Satanic playfulness was no novelty; Vinegar often behaved in the same fashion, leaping about just out of reach when she wanted to catch him and shut him up indoors.
‘Or in these thick brown woods,’ he concurred. ‘Folly Wood is especially dense.{230}’
‘Is?’
‘Is. Once a wood, always a wood.’
Once a wood, always a wood. The words rang true, and she sat silent, considering them. ”

“ The chief feature, however, is a dense growth in the centre, consisting of dogwood, water-beech, swamp-ash, alder, spice-bush, hazel, etc., with a net-work of smilax and frost-grape. A little zigzag stream, the draining of a swamp beyond, which passes through this tangle-wood, accounts for many of its features and productions, if not for its entire existence. Birds that are not attracted by the heath or the cedar and chestnut, are sure to find some excuse for visiting this miscellaneous growth in the centre. ”

“ It ranks with lodgepole pine in that respect. Nature can afford to wait two hundred years for a forest to mature, but men will not plant and protect when the prospect of returns is so remote. The wood is light, weak, moderately stiff and hard. The heartwood is pale brown, the sap nearly white. The summerwood appears in thin but well-marked bands in the annual rings, and the medullary rays are large enough to show slightly in quarter-sawed lumber. Growing as it does, interspersed with really valuable woods, the lovely fir is not highly thought of from a commercial standpoint. ”

“ In places it makes the underwoods as blue as the sky, and its rank perfume loads the air. Tennyson speaks of "sheets of hyacinths." We have no wood flower in the Eastern States that grows in such profusion. ”

“ About firewood-gathering by the poor in woods and forests, my old friend of Fonthill Bishop says that the people of the villages adjacent to the Fonthill and Great Ridge Woods were allowed to take as much dead wood as they wanted from those places. ”

“ The wood is firm, fine grained, and difficult to break. The leaves are larger, but resemble in form and colour those of the common wormwood of the gardens. The flavour is that of a compound of garden wormwood and sage: hence it has received the names of "wild wormwood" and "wild sage." Its stiff and knotty branches are peculiarly unpleasant to the traveller among them. It stands so thickly over thousands of acres of the mountain valleys, that it is well nigh impossible to urge a horse through it ”

“ The Forests of the World.—The rapid exhaustion of the forests of the world, and more particularly of the once great reserves of timber in the United States and Canada, renders it inevitable that, in a very few years indeed, iron must supersede wood for a variety of uses. The drain upon the world's resources in timber is prodigious. Every year 92,000,000 railway sleepers are used in America alone, while to supply firewood for the whole of the States, fourteen times the quantity of wood consumed by the railways is annually required. ”

“ And first, he calls it a White Mexican Wood, whereas (not to mention that Mornardes informs us that it is brought out of Nova Hispania) the Wood that we have met with in several places, and employ'd as Lignum Nephriticum, was not White, but for the most part of a much Darker Colour, not unlike that of the Sadder Colour'd Wood of Juniper. 'Tis true, that Monardes himself also says, that the Wood is White; and it is affirm'd, that the Wood which is of a Sadder Colour is Adulterated by being Imbu'd with the Tincture of a Vegetable, in whose Decoction it is steep'd. ”

“ The driftwood, which is reported to be abundant east of Point Barrow, probably comes from the great rivers emptying into the Arctic 60 Ocean. This wood is sufficiently abundant to furnish the natives with all they need for fuel and other purposes, and consists chiefly of pine, spruce, and cottonwood, mostly in the form of water-worn logs, often of large size. Of late years, also, much wood of the different kinds used in shipbuilding has drifted ashore from wrecks. ”

“ It was by no means a frequented road, and belonged of right to Lord Hartledon only; but it was open to all. Few chose it when they could traverse the more ordinary way. The narrow path on the green plain, sheltered by trees, wound in and out, now on the banks of the river, now hidden amidst a portion of the wood. Altogether it was a wild and lonely pathway; not one that a timid nature would choose on a dark night. You might sit in the wood, which lay to the left, a whole day through, and never see a soul. ”

“ It weighs 81.14 pounds per cubic foot, and when a hundred pounds of the wood is burned, it leaves eight pounds of ashes—the highest in ash of all woods of the United States. Its fuel value is very high. Trees are small, seldom more than thirty feet high and six inches in diameter. Bluewood (Condalia obovata) is a related Texas species, called also logwood and purple haw. It produces heavy, hard, close-grained wood, light red in color. Trees six inches in diameter and twenty-five feet high are fully up to the average. Along the lower Rio Grande it forms dense, tangled thickets. ”

“ To Boldre Wood they then proceeded, and, striking into a thicket of hollies, Mat proceeded to beat, with the result of putting up several woodcock, which either flew the wrong side of the bushes for Burns, or which he missed. Though usually a fair shot, this snap-shooting in dense hollies was new to him; so, getting tired of missing, and the light being worse here than in the open, he called to Mat, and stepped out on to a furzy plain. ”

“ Of course the growth was often very peculiar; luxuriant on the sunward side, starved on the northern aspect, disproportionate, maybe, though often on those curious branches fruit was abundant for those who sought. Probably we would train those oaks, and cedars, and apple-trees in the midst of the wood to more conventional shapes if we had them to-day. Hugh Bourne might have to overcome that habit of putting his hand before his face as he talked, and he would certainly have to use language much less lurid than he occasionally employed. ”

“ The End Of Whitefoot's Worries You never can tell! You never can tell! Things going wrong will often end well. —Whitefoot.
The next time you meet him just ask Whitefoot if this isn't so. Things had been going very wrong for Whitefoot. It had begun to look to Whitefoot as if he would no longer have a snug, hidden little home in Farmer Brown's sugar-house. The pile of wood under which he had made that snug little home was disappearing so fast that it began to look as if in a little while there would be no wood at all. ”

“ Just as he had about made up his mind that there was nothing to do but to try to find his way home, his keen little ears caught the faintest rustle of dry leaves. Instantly Whitefoot was alert and watchful. Long ago he had learned to be suspicious of rustling leaves. They might have been rustled by the feet of an enemy stealing up on him. No Wood Mouse who wants to live long is ever heedless of rustling leaves. As still as if he couldn't move, Whitefoot sat staring at the place from which that faint sound had seemed to come. ”