Brushwood

“ Thick brushwood now and then forms an opposing barrier, but generally the forest is beautifully open, consisting of towering trees, the leviathans of their race, sheltering the scanty saplings which have spring from their fallen seeds. ”

“ Now they penetrated extensive thickets of brushwood, and again wound up among the tall stems of luxuriant oaks, or passed, with greater ease to themselves and their weary horses, over small open glades among the woods. ”

“ The path opened presently into a clearing where the moonlight made a pool of silver, the surrounding brushwood fell away; and in the centre a gigantic outline rose. It was, he saw, a beech tree that dwarfed the surrounding forest by its grandeur. Its bulk loomed very splendid against the sky, a faint rustle just audible in its myriad tiny leaves. Dipped in the moonlight, it had such majesty of proportion, such symmetry, that he stopped in admiration. It was, he saw, a multiple tree, five stems springing with attempted spirals out of an enormous trunk ”

“ By six o'clock we are again on the road, and passing through a rolling park-like country dotted with clumps of cottonwood, birch, poplar, and spruce. Sometimes, we pass lush meadow upon which graze full-fleshed cattle and comfortably rotund sheep. On one farm, a man is burning dead brushwood. There is no keener pleasure than, here and there, to thrust a core of fire into long grass or brushwood, and to watch the red tongues of flame as they greedily lap it up. As yet, no farmer has written about it, but this is only because farmers are afraid of literary critics. ”

“ What had lately been shapely groups were lying perfectly flat, the bare-stemmed, leafless portions of the inner part of the group showing, and looking like a faggot of dry brushwood, that, having been stood upright, had burst its band and fallen apart in all directions. Some, whose stems had weathered many snowy winters, now had them broken short off half-way up; while others escaped with bare life, but with the thick, strong stem broken down, the heavy head lying on the ground, and the stem wrenched open at the break, like a half-untwisted rope. ”

“ I walked yesterday as far as Brushwood House, on a little matter of business, and on my return home, just as I came to the corner of the coppice, I saw a respectable looking young man sitting on the stump of a tree in the hedgerow. ”

“ Making choice of some spot as a centre, where a quantity of brushwood grows or is laid down, the men surround it on all sides, and move slowly towards it, spreading their cloaks in their outstretched hands, and flapping them like the wings of huge birds. ”

“ Captain Hutton says:—"This is a common species both in the Dhoon and in the hills, and may be found at all seasons, making known its presence among the brushwood by the utterance of a clear and musical note like the ringing of a tiny bell. ”

“ As I mused upon the contrast they must afford in the bright daylight to the wide and well-kept lawns of the more ambitious owners on either side, a footstep sounded on the loose boards which had evidently been flung down at one side of the house as a sort of protection to the foot from the darkness and mud of the neglected path, and a woman's form swung dimly into view, laden with a great pile of what looked to me like brushwood. ”

“ A little farther up the dense wood of tufted trees contributed to diffuse that religious light half over the rocks, the brushwood and the fertile soil, and on the limpid water, which is at once the charm and the horror of old neglected woods. ”

“ In forests of this kind, the undergrowth of brushwood of every variety is exceedingly abundant and beautiful: every woodland shrub is to be found there—the hazel especially—and the thickets thereby formed are quite impenetrable. As the older and larger [Pg 456] trees decay, they lose their footing in the soil, and fall in every variety of strange position—presenting a picture of desolation, the effect of which is at first strange to the mind, and at last becomes even painful. ”

“ Father and son, mother and son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes, perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground. ”

“ We found a number of men actually at work with axes and mattocks; yokes of oxen, too, were straining at strong ploughs, which forced a way in amongst the roots and small stumps of the natural brushwood, and, here and there, underneath a rough mat of tangled grass, bringing to light, now black vegetable mould, now dry clay, now loose red sand. ”

“ It chiefly consisted of oaks and birches, which, though they had grown to a considerable size in certain parts, so that their [154] wide-spreading heads had kept the knolls on which their stems stood, altogether free from the incumbrance of any kind of brushwood,—had yet in most places risen up thinner and smaller, leaving ample room and air around them to support thickets of the tallest broom and juniper bushes. ”

“ In winter you will always know the Common Elm by its brushwood clothing, and in early spring, in March, after there have been a few sunny days, you will see tiny green leaf buds opening in this brushwood sheaf before the large upper branches show any signs of life.
The Common Elm is one of our tallest trees. It has a thick rough trunk, on which are many large gnarled bosses or knobs. The bark of the tree is very rugged and is covered with many deep furrows. ”

“ Beyond the brushwood, which grows where the original forest has been cut down, there are large trees covered with numerous epiphytes—Tillandsias, orchids, ferns, and a hundred others, that make every big tree an aerial garden. ”

“ Far and near the eye meets with nothing but bare and mostly snow-covered peaks and crags.
It is scarcely possible to keep one's self warm, especially as they have here no fuel but brushwood, and of that, too, they are obliged to be very sparing, as they have to fetch it up the mountains, from a distance of at least three leagues; for at the summit, they tell us, scarcely any kind of wood grows. ”

“ When we consider that the places in question are all of them sunk below the surface of the soil, and that the face of the country in which they are found is overspread with brushwood, and nowhere perfectly level, it will not be thought extraordinary if some of them should have escaped us in a diligent and frequently-repeated search. ”

“ Brushwood and rough pasturage of some sort is found almost everywhere, except in the neighbourhood of the larger settlements, where forage and firewood have to be brought in from long distances. The Nafud sands, too, are tufted in many places with bushes or small trees, and after the winter rains they produce excellent pasture. ”

“ A low forest skirts all the shores, succeeded by a broad belt of brushwood, above which, to the summits of the hills, extend grassy slopes. On a closer inspection of the forest, it is found to be composed of a dense thicket of stag-headed trees, so gnarled and stunted by the violence of the gales, as to afford an excellent shelter for a luxuriant under-growth of bright green feathery ferns, and several gay-flowered herbs. ”

“ When a piece of ground is to be planted, a number of the villagers collect and cut down the brushwood on a selected spot; the seed is then scattered among the wood as it lies. In due time the grain, which is well sheltered from the sun by the branches, springs up and overtops them, and when fit for harvesting the ears are gathered. ”

“ A space about 300 feet long and 40 feet broad is then cleared of brushwood, at the foot of the tree; a platform is rigged about twelve feet up the tree, on which a pair of woodmen stand and hew away right and left until it falls head foremost down the side of the mountain, carrying with it a number of smaller trees in a great crash. ”

“ Orchards and little patches of ground that have been cleared and cultivated are hidden entirely, and one cannot help thinking that if this interminable forest of brushwood were once to get fairly ablaze, nothing could prevent it from destroying everything these villagers possess. ”

“ The men gather dry branches, dry logs, and dry brushwood, and raise a pile about three feet in height, three feet in width, and six or seven feet in length. The woods are selected of those kinds which not only ignite easily, but which will continue to burn without attention until quite consumed. ”

“ We found that by casting into the embers a quantity of dry brushwood, and blowing upon them, we could obtain a brisk fire in a very little time, and when we had no more need of it for the present, we laid on a heap of grass and twigs, not too dry, and shut down the lid, and so found that we could keep our fire alive for a whole day with no more tending. ”

“ Like the Australians, New Zealand Colonists call their forest "bush." What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" in the Colonies.
The wood of many of the trees is not only useful timber, but when cut and polished is often beautiful in grain. Unhappily, their destruction goes on with rapid strides. The trees, as is usually the case with those the wood of which is hard, grow slowly. They feel exposure to wind, and seem to need the society and shelter of their fellows. ”

“ The underwood is composed of all the various shrubs we had met with in the Straits of Magalhaens; and this brushwood is so thickly spread over the lower parts of the shores of the harbour, that it is only by crawling over it that the distance of a few yards from the rocks can be gained; and being generally of insufficient strength to support a man's weight, it frequently gives way beneath him, and he is so completely buried, as to make it difficult for him to extricate himself. ”

“ The birds, too, have left us; they have gone to the wood on the other side of the Sound; even the gay cuckoo cannot find a single stunted bush where it might hide. He has burnt all the wild wood that ran so prettily up the slope from end to end of this property. You won’t gather as many sticks from the brushwood as would serve to boil a pot of potatoes, or as many twigs as would make a fishing basket. ”

“ As in nature the growth of trees and their proneness where undermined to fall across the slope and support the bank secures at some points a fair depth of channel and some degree of permanence, so in the project of the engineer the use of timber and brush and the encouragement of forest growth are the main features. It is proposed to reduce the width where excessive by brushwood dykes, at first low, but raised higher and higher as the mud of the river settles under their shelter, and finally slope them back at the angle upon which willows will grow freely. ”

“ He became rector of the Jesuit college at Hildesheim and then at Münster, where he died on the 31st of January 1668, being at the time father-confessor to Bishop Bernard of Galen.
BUSH. (1) (A word common to many European languages, meaning "a wood", cf. the Ger. Busch, Fr. bois, Ital. bosco and the med. Lat. boscus) , a shrub or group of shrubs, especially of those plants whose branches grow low and thick. Collectively "the bush" is used in British colonies, particularly in Australasia and South Africa, for the tract of country covered with brushwood not yet cleared for cultivation. ”

“ The men ascend the trees to some ten or twelve feet of height, just where the stem narrows, supporting themselves by a flexible vine branch twisted hoop-fashion round the tree and their waist. They then chop away at the timber, and slip nimbly to the ground just as the upper part of the tree is falling. The trunks and branches are then gathered together until the dry season is just over, when the whole mass is lighted, and on the ground thus cleared of trees and brushwood the women plant their manioc, plantains, and maize. ”

“ Captain Ribain's company of Chasseurs d'Orleans, sent to cover the foraging, steadily retired upon the column; from brushwood to brushwood, from tree to tree, each man retreated, seeking a favourable position, a good ambuscade ”

“ 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. ”

“ The greater part of these had come over with us from the Cambridge garden. Most plentiful of all are the Blush Roses. (Bushels of their scented petals are yearly cured by me for Potpourri.) One or two bushes of it still straggled on in the old-time border, and brought up to their possibilities by transplantation and sufficient food, soon became good to see, as also did the lone rose bush from the edge of the grass-plot, dear to the Lady's heart as the gift of a dead friend, and, summer after summer feeding the delusive hope of bloom, nursed in her optimistic soul. ”

“ The woods are dense with full-grown leafage. Of all the trees, only the basswood has delayed its blossoming, to crown the height of summer and fill the sun-steeped air with a perfume that calls all the wild bees from hollow tree and scant woodside gleaning to a wealth of honey gathering, and all the hive-dwellers from their board-built homes to a finer and sweeter pillage than is offered by the odorous white sea of buckwheat. Half the flowers of wood and fields are out of bloom. ”