CHAPTER III .sx TREES AND WOODS .sx IF ancestral memory counts for anything we should have a feeling for trees above other things .sx We are said to have had a long simian past , and we still carry in our bodies vestigial remainders of the good old arboreal days .sx No wonder then , that some people do develop as strong a ruling passion for trees as for dogs and horses .sx But there is no need for us to go back to pre-history .sx Our own English history , until very recent times , had a strong forest background .sx You might say of its great pageant scenes that every crowd had its sylvan lining .sx There is an immense difference between that and a brick-and-mortar framework to the imagination .sx The history book only lets this out every now and then in some small gossip about Robin Hood or Margaret of Anjou and her courteous robber friends .sx The guide-book , too , only gives us an occasional jolt by pointing out a riven oak with a history , or mentioning the relic of a royal forest .sx The sightseer should always have a forest background ready to let down at the back of his mind like one of those roller blinds which our local theatres keep to supply all occasions from As You Like It to The Babes in the Wood .sx It gives atmosphere which points the meaning to local history and monuments which have lost the cavernous , mystic , slumberous insulation of the woods .sx The majority of carved fragments , other than crosses , which we preserve from Saxon date , are covered with hunting scenes .sx This has often been explained on .sx allegorical grounds , for the stag , in the lore of the ancient naturalists , destroys its enemy the serpent , and may therefore represent the Church of Christ .sx No doubt the stag is sometimes shown with this symbolic motive .sx But in general , these hunting scenes may be taken at face value as the natural expression of the sculptor's mind when making a decorative essay .sx At any rate , the forest background was essentially pleasant to the Saxon mind .sx It was to be the reverse of that after 1066 .sx When William the First came over , there was hardly any part of the country which had not a large forest in its neighbourhood .sx He used this fact as the main lever in his disarmament policy , which applied equally to the conquered Saxon and his own followers .sx He made all the forests royal forests and enacted the sternest laws , ostensibly for the preservation of game within their boundaries , actually to create a system of courts which would automatically check the arming or forgathering of Saxon archers or the over-arming of their Norman overlords .sx To disguise his real purpose he produced a code of laws purporting to have been laid down by Canute to show that he was only enforcing old laws of the country which had lapsed .sx That code is now believed to be a deliberate forgery .sx It is a mistake , however , to think of the forest laws as a tyranny after the time of the early Norman kings .sx They remained very strictly in force , but the forest courts only imposed fines , very rarely imprisonment .sx Mutilations and the death penalty were done away with by the time of Edward the First .sx By the sixteenth century the forests had turned from a public nuisance into a public boon .sx They had become almost democratic institutions .sx The people had gained large common rights ( which , in spite of the later enclosure acts , they have not quite lost yet) .sx They provided food for herds of swine as well ashorses , material for buildings and ships , and charcoal for heating , and for making gunpowder .sx The first great blow to the forests was the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 ; the second , the Civil War of 1642 ; the third , the Industrial Revolution of the early nineteenth century .sx The first of these shocks was probably the worst , as it let in the rot .sx The damage done during the Napoleonic wars was largely made good by replanting .sx And as this replanting was made generally in oak , with a view to building large navies , both royal and mercantile , it mostly remained standing ; for , with the invention of the iron hull , the wooden walls of old England became extinct .sx When the last war came it was the small woods rather than the forests which suffered .sx Then there was a terrible slaughter of small woods and stately avenues .sx When the former were replanted the economic slogan was no longer `Ships !sx ' but `Pit-props !sx ' Accordingly , much of our most beautiful countryside was horribly marred .sx Any one who remembers the valley entrances to Bettws-y-Coed in pre-war days , with their natural mantling of oak , beech , and birch against the mountain background , must feel a pang of sorrow when they pass that way to-day , to see the gloom cast on those lovely slopes by meaningless masses of alien pines , and I hope a pang of shame for their share in the public apathy .sx In that forest background which I have said the sightseer should have ready to display at the back of his mind , there should be a suggestion that something more than the beasts may lurk under the boughs and behind the trunks .sx There must have been quite a large population in the old forests of whose ways of life and doings we shall never hear anything .sx Only a few names have come down to us of robber chiefs and of gangs which became a menace to the community , and therefore had to be rounded up the Doones , the Merry Men of Sherwood , the Wild .sx Men of Mawddwy , and so on , but there must have been thousands that were left alone by common consent and never mentioned except in a whisper .sx It was not an uncommon thing in the Middle Ages to outlaw a man .sx It was a much cheaper punishment for the Government than the later device of transporting him .sx They simply removed the protection of the law , and he vanished out of the law's sight into the forest .sx And what became of all those mercenaries who came over to fight in John's wars and the Wars of the Roses ?sx Generally when their side lost they could not be paid .sx How many of those which had backed the wrong horse ever returned to their native land ?sx In the early eighteenth century , poaching in the forest became a highly fashionable pastime for gentlemen .sx Such were the Deer Hunters of Cranborne Chase .sx They dressed in heavily-quilted clothes , and wore hats shaped like the steel helmet of the last war , only made in straw bee-hive fashion .sx They hoped as much for a battle with the keepers as for a kill of venison .sx Their successors were the smugglers .sx The New Forest was the strong point of the 'trade .sx ' KINDS OF WOODLAND .sx It is often pointed out that the word `forest' signifies a hunting area rather than one where trees abound .sx And , indeed , many spaces on the map which still bear the name of forest have hardly a tree upon them , and look as if they could not support that kind of growth .sx Such are Radnor Forest , the Forest of the High Peak , Snowdon Forest , the Forest of Bowland .sx But the evidence of peat bogs in high situations is that most of these now barren forests actually were treed in medieval times , and have been stripped since , so that it seems almost possible that the word forest may , after all , mean what we really thought it did , The more correct name , however , for the popular conception is highwood .sx Speaking generally , and not in the more specialized language of forestry , a coppice or copse ( generally pronounced as the latter , though by some coppy ) is a small wood where timber is grown with an eye to its sale .sx A spinney or covert ( pronounced cover ) is a small wood where sporting considerations come first .sx Such provide temporary shelter for pheasants and woodcock until the beaters come and scare them out .sx Lines of trees grown to provide shelter for crops in wind-swept areas are called wind-breaks .sx Much of our finest timber is also grown in the hedgerow .sx Had they gone on building wooden ships we should have lost an enormous number of the fine oaks which are such a feature of the Midland hedgerows .sx For what was wanted in the construction of the wooden hull was something that grew crookedly to make knees and ribs of .sx But now the only wooden ship left on our waters is the canal barge , and the demand for crooked trees is small .sx While the Victory cannot keep the sea any longer , there are a few wooden barges afloat which are over a hundred years old .sx But the fashion in oak now is for straight timber .sx The words chase and park have sometimes been used instead of forest to indicate a royal domain under the forest law .sx But they usually refer to a portion of a royal forest which was fenced off and owned privately .sx All .sx chases and most parks at the present day represent old cores of the royal forests which owe their continuance to having been fenced off in this way .sx Thus , Sherwood Forest , which was still tolerably intact two hundred years ago , is now represented by a series of parks .sx WOOD .sx Before mentioning individual trees by name I should like to say something about the nature of wood itself .sx It is astonishing how few people know one wood from another by sight .sx In spite of the perpetual exclamations one hears about 'beautiful old oak' in beams , floors , and furniture , how many of the exclaimers are able to identify with certainty the wood they so much admire ?sx Even noted antiquarians seem to have been easily misled on this elementary point .sx Dr. J. C. Cox says :sx `The idea also , at one time so current , and still confidently held by a few , that chestnut wood forms the roofs of many of our oldest churches and at Westminster Hall , proves on examination to be a fable .sx In all these cases the wood is in reality the close-grained oak of the sessilora variety' meaning the tree that we shall presently introduce at the durmast oak .sx The grain of wood depends on two things , the ring ; of growth called annual rings , and the vessels which radiate from the centre of a tree to its circumference called the medullary rays .sx A tree which sheds its leaves in the autumn and grows them again the following spring will do its growing in jumps , as , when it has no leaves , hardly any sap rises , and the plant is practically dormant .sx Its grain is therefore marked by a series of more or less porous tracts , the sap highways of each successive year an open grain .sx But if the tree keeps its leaves all the winter like the pine , its growth will not be stopped for that season , but only slowed up .sx The grain is not then marked by porous tracts but by tracts of different colour , of which the summer growths give wider and lighter coloured lines a close grain .sx This kind of evergreen tree grows fast , making a wood which is not too dense to cut easily .sx But if an evergreen grows slowly , like box and lignum vitae , the result is a dense , close grain with an almost metallic hardness .sx The appearance of grain in wood is called by the cabinetmakers figure or flower .sx They have in amazing vocabulary to describe the effects of figure , such as fiddle-back , felt , mirrors , bird's-eye , landscape , burr , etc. It is the medullary ray which is chiefly responsible for the varieties of figure , particularly in oak .sx And the really effective display of figure such as one sees on the panels of old dresser doors is got by cutting planks `on the quarter,' by which means the medullary ray is dissected to its best advantage , though at the cost of a large wastage in good timber .sx It is only the English oak which gives a really magnificent figure .sx The figure of our other native , the durmast oak , is poor even if cut on the quarter .sx Most of our modern oak furniture , although sold under the high-sounding names of Jacobean or 'Reproduction' is made of oak imported from America and Japan , the former a wood completely barren of medullary figure , the latter nearly so .sx