It Was, The Only Shelter In Sight,
And To It I Went, To Discover Much To My Disgust That The
Trees Were Nothing But Elders.
For there is no tree that
affords so poor a shelter, especially on the high open downs,
where the foliage is scantier than in other situations and
lets in the wind and rain in full force upon you.
But the elder affects me in two ways. I like it on account of
early associations, and because the birds delight in its
fruit, though they wisely refuse to build in its branches; and
I dislike it because its smell is offensive to me and its
berries the least pleasant of all wild fruits to my taste. I
can eat ivy-berries in March, and yew in its season, poison or
not; and hips and haws and holly-berries and harsh acorn, and
the rowan, which some think acrid; but the elderberry I can't
stomach.
How comes it, I have asked more than once, that this poor tree
is so often seen on the downs where it is so badly fitted to
be and makes so sorry an appearance with its weak branches
broken and its soft leaves torn by the winds? How badly it
contrasts with the other trees and bushes that flourish on the
downs - furze, juniper, holly, blackthorn, and hawthorn!
Two years ago, one day in the early spring, I was walking on
an extensive down in another part of Wiltshire with the tenant
of the land, who began there as a large sheep-farmer, but
eventually finding that he could make more with rabbits than
with sheep turned most of his land into a warren.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 147 of 298
Words from 40143 to 40424
of 82198
