Forest floor

“ The deep shadows of the woods immediately around you grow deeper and blacker as the flames leap and sparkle upwards, causing the stems of the surrounding trees, and the foliage of the overhanging branches, to stand out in bold relief, bathed in a ruddy glow, which converts the forest chamber into a snug, home-like place, and fills the mind with agreeable, home-like feelings and meditations. ”

“ Passed through the deer-park wood of old oaks, spread over the side of a bold hill, and of such an extent, that the scene is a truly forest one, without any other boundary in view than what the stems of trees offer from mere extent, retiring one behind another till they thicken so much to the eye, under the shade of their spreading tops, as to form a distant wall of wood. ”

“ Finally an ancient stone wall with tiled roof threw a protective semicircle close about all this at the rear, beyond which the rather thin pine forest, gnarled and bent with age, climbed the hill-slopes across which only disrespectful mortals ever pass. ”

“ The steep slopes are clothed with vegetation and crested with a miniature forest of pines and fir trees that mingle their dark-hued verdure with the brighter foliage of the oak and the birch, making a little fairyland of woodland beauty, the natural charm of which is heightened by the cloud-shadows gliding slowly across. ”

“ The large forest trees, always grand, graceful, and appropriate, would become such a house, throwing a protecting air around and over its quiet, unpretending roof. Vines, or climbing roses, might throw their delicate spray around the columns of the modest veranda, and a varied selection of familiar shrubbery and ornamental plants checker the immediate front and sides of the house looking out upon the lawn; through which a spacious walk, or 126 carriage-way should wind, from the high road, or chief approach. ”

“ Captain Sherwood advanced a few steps and listened—the low, melancholy howl of a dog broke the stillness. Then he approached the front door to knock, but finding it open, entered.
The lower rooms of the house were dark and deserted; the furniture was scattered about in great disorder. Again the captain heard the howl of a dog which seemed to come from over his head, and hastening up the stairs he entered one of the upper rooms, where a horrid spectacle met his sight. There, on the floor, lay an old man weltering in his blood—dead. ”

“ May 28th.—The most extraordinary blight is now upon the trees that I believe ever was known: it is confined entirely to the oak, and chiefly to the large trees, although in some parts it is extending to the young plantations. The whole of the High Meadow woods and great part of the Forest, particularly Russell’s Enclosure, and where the timber is thick, are entirely stripped of their leaves, and look as if fire had passed through them. Where a beech stands amongst them, it is perfectly green, and the oaks all around quite brown. ”

“ Little by little the garden—my old garden that used to be a perfect forest of weeds, in which there was never an end to discovering new trees or plants—so well were they hidden—was transformed and reduced to order. The alleys were cleaned out and sanded, the beds remade and the rose bushes trimmed. The trees, reduced to their proper [Pg 111] proportions, cast a well defined shade. A useless field became an orchard. A fountain, set in the heart of a grass plot, sent up a shaft of water to fall in a fine musical rain into its basin. ”

“ The rose terrace is divided from the lawn by a treillage of the most delicate and elaborate trellis-work; and this also is wreathed and festooned by running rose vines.
Below this spreads the lawn on every side, not level, but gently waving, and covered with grass as soft, as 44smooth, and as downy as velvet; and everywhere the eye roves with pleasure over a turf of brilliant intense green, except where it is variegated with the floral mosaic work of gay parterres, or trellised arbours, or reservoirs, or single magnificent forest trees left standing in honour of their monarchal grandeur. ”

“ We look across a floor of green, dappled with shade and sunshine, through the varied intervals of the grove of fruit trees, beneath the perfect foliage, to a field of light, with changing colour and ever-changing appearance, whence a freshness is wafted towards us across the flowering grass. ”

“ Presently I came to thicker wood, where the trees were much taller and in greater variety; and after this came another sterile strip, like that on the edge of the wood, where stone cropped out from the ground and nothing grew except the yellow-flowered thorn bushes. Passing this sterile ribbon, which seemed to extend to a considerable distance north and south, and was fifty to a hundred yards wide, the forest again became dense and the trees large, with much undergrowth in places obstructing the view and making progress difficult. ”

“ They were Edgar Sherwood and Imogene Lear.
“Maurice!” said Edgar in a low tone, approaching the dying man.
“Great God!” said Iron Hand. “It is he! it is he! I know that voice! Oh! oh! he will kill me, and I can not move. Let me escape—hide me, for I shot him once. I have been his evil shadow all his life!” and he struggled violently to raise himself.
“He raves,” said the surgeon; “we must get that dagger from him, or he may do some mischief.”
But just then the madman dropped the weapon upon the floor. ”

“ Out-of-doors, looking beyond the flower-garden, lawn, back yards, pigeon-houses, and kitchen-gardens, we are surrounded by a network of smooth grazing-fields, each shut off from the other by its neat hedgerow and its sturdy gate. Beyond the fields the hills seem to flow away gently from us into the far blue distance, till they are lost in the bright softness of the sky. ”

“ This nearest way was across a broad expanse of turf, and through a shrubbery into the garden at the back of the rooms occupied by the old man, who had for many years been unable to go up and down stairs, and who had, for that length of time, inhabited a suite of rooms on the ground-floor, opening with French windows on to a tiny lawn, shut in and sheltered by a thick belt of pine and evergreens. ”

“ It has a beautiful lawn and garden all around it, and on the first floor out of all the rooms there are long windows, like doors, which are always kept open, so you can walk out onto the grass any time, just as easily as walking out from underneath a tree. ”

“ And, with the dark, the Forest came up boldly and pressed against the very walls and windows, peering in upon them, joining hands above the slates and chimneys. The winds were always walking on the lawn and gravel paths ”

“ They scan all the red wilderness, dispensing their blessings of cool shadows and rain where the need is the greatest, refreshing the rocks, their offspring as well as the vegetation, continuing their sculpture, deepening gorges and sharpening peaks. Sometimes, blending all together, they weave a ceiling from rim to rim, perhaps opening a window here and there for sunshine to stream through, suddenly lighting some palace or temple and making it flare in the rain as if on fire. ”

“ The mountain slope on which we live must have always been beautiful of itself; but for all that, our garden—that is to say, the space about our landlord's house and our own—has been treated with extreme care. Our inclosure is framed towards the great temple groves, and the great mountains behind them, by a high wall of rock, over which, at a corner edged with moss, rolls a torrent, making a waterfall that breaks three times. The pool below, edged with iris that grow in the garden sand, is crossed by a bridge of three big flat stones, and empties secretly away. ”

“ In the crowded city, among the poorest houses, one often sees, in the corner of a little earth-area that comes between the sill and [pg 275] the raised floor, a miniature garden made in some shallow box, or even on the ground itself. In gardens of any pretensions, a little pond or sheet of water of irregular outline is an indispensable feature. If a brook can be turned to run through the garden, one of the great charms is attained ”

“ The whole vast enclosure is covered with a grove of great oaks, which, in some cases, have pushed down the walls. In one case, the growing oak has pulled out one stone from its place and carried it up in its embrace several feet above the rest of the wall. So luxuriant is the vegetation all over the hill that one who will see the whole wall outside and inside—and no less will satisfy one—must give up a whole day to the task, and force his way through thorns and briers that scratch and tear, paying with his person. ”

“ What nature does in a field and woods she will do in one's dooryard if one will only watch her methods and co-operate with her. In the woods, for instance, she shakes down the ripe leaves from the trees, cuts with frost and age the undergrowth and sends the wind to drift them into piles where she waters and compacts them until in process of time they lose their identity as leaves and plants and become a fine, black mould, fine and warm to the touch and blended with a clean, sharp, white sand, or silicate. ”

“ He would be a strange traveller who would not forsake the dusty highway and plunge into the cool tangled glades till all sense of direction is lost. For the special and peculiar beauty of this, unlike most Forest enclosures, is that there are no straight rides cutting it transversely, but the winding alleys seem of Nature’s own planting, and these make it easy to stray, one fair group of noble trees after another beckoning along the wide green ways into the heart of the wood. One may fancy one is following the direction of the road, but it is far out of sight in a few minutes. ”

“ Most strangers visiting the Forest do so in the expectation of seeing groves of stately timber covering the ground in every direction, and are much disappointed when they find the greater part to consist of oaks, barely fifty years old, comprised in enclosures, and the remainder of the surface disfigured by furnaces, collieries, and groups of inferior buildings. ”

“ The yard was still as Parfaite had described it—full of rank grass, through which one path trailed to the open door. On the stockade walls grass grew, as though where men will not live like men Nature labours to smother. ”

“ Above the house the ground rises another step, and the boundary of the garden here is a wall of native rock, which is already half veiled with the trees and trailing plants interposed to relieve its ruggedness. ”

“ Of these wooden fences, except in the rare case of those very highly decorated ones, ornés de dragons bleus et de bizarres fleurs, for temple grounds, the wood is always left unpainted. In a land which can boast a hundred and eighty-six varieties of forest trees alone, there is naturally a wonderful choice of material. ”

“ My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound. ”

“ The intense green and the density of the crowns in summer make the trees conspicuous in any landscape where they occur, while their brilliant colors in autumn are the chief glory of the forest where they abound. ”

“ By carefully ricking the wood, with the crooks and elbows in every possible direction—at which some cordwood cutters are very proficient—a cord of wood may be constructed in the forest, which, when sold and delivered in the buyer’s shed, contracts like an accordion. ”

“ Roof-tree behind roof-tree, ridge behind ridge, is drawn along in succession, line behind line till they become as close together as the test-lines used for microscopes. Under this surface of roofs what a profundity of life there is! Just as the great horses in the waggons of London streets convey the idea of strength, so the endlessness of the view conveys the idea of a mass of life. Life converges from every quarter. ”

“ It grows almost everywhere throughout the entire extent of the forest until the higher slopes of the mountains are reached, and produces a very picturesque and delightful effect; relieving the bareness of the great shafts of the evergreens, without being close enough in its growth to hide them wholly, or to cover the bright mossy carpet that is spread beneath all the dense parts of the woods. ”

“ Through grounds laid out in symmetrical alternation of orchard and grove, shrubbery, close-carpeted field, and garden beds, arranged with evident regard to effect in form and colour, as well as to fitting distribution of shade and sun, we followed a straight path which sloped under a canopy of flowering creepers up to the terrace on which stood the house itself. ”

“ Others represent oblong ridges, traversed by numerous underground galleries, while some species make their dwellings in deep horizontal tunnels, or excavations, often extending under the bed of broad rivers. Many kinds lead an arboreal life, and their nests may be seen sticking like huge excrescences to the trunks of the forest-trees, and as often suspended from the branches. ”

“ The yard may vary in size, but it must be of soil, clothed upon with grass, with a bush or a tree in it, a garden, and some animal, even if the tree has to grow in the garden and the animal has to be kept in the tree, as with one of my neighbors, who is forced to keep his bees in his single weeping willow, his yard not being large enough for his house and his hive. ”

“ Nowhere does the grass spring up so industriously as in this homely yard, along the base of the stone wall and in the sheltered nooks of the buildings, and especially around the southern door-step—a locality which seems particularly favorable to its growth, for it is already tall enough to bend over and wave in the wind. ”