Inside,
the bark is white streaked with brown; presently it will be all brown.
While some strip it, others collect the pieces, and with them build
toy-like sheds of bark, which is the manner of stacking it.
From the peeled tree there rises a sweet odour of sap: the green mead,
the green underwood and hawthorn around, are all lit up with the genial
sunbeams. The beautiful wind-anemones are gone, too tender and lovely
for so rude an earth; but the wild hyacinths droop their blue bells
under the wood, and the cowslips rise in the grass. The nightingale
sings without ceasing; the soft 'coo-coo' of the dove sounds hard by;
the merry cuckoo calls as he flies from elm to elm; the wood-pigeons
rise and smite their wings together over the firs. In the mere below the
coots are at play; they chase each other along the surface of the water
and indulge in wild evolutions. Everything is happy. As the plough-boys
stroll along they pluck the young succulent hawthorn leaves and nibble
them.
It is the sweetest time of all for wandering in the wood. The brambles
have not yet grown so bushy as to check the passage; the thistles that
in autumn will be as tall as the shoulder and thick as a walking-stick
are as yet no bar; burrs do not attach themselves at every step, though
the broad burdock leaves are spreading wide. In its full development the
burdock is almost a shrub rather than a plant, with a woody stem an inch
or more in diameter.
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