Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/28

Rh too, Nature's own love and tenderness for her trees,—how, when they have grown old and are going to decay, she clothes them with fresh beauty, hides their deformities with a soft green veil of moss and the grey dyes of lichens, and, not even content with this, makes them the support for still greater loveliness—drapes them with masses of ivy, and hangs upon them the tresses of the woodbine, loading them to the end of their days with sweetness and beauty.

All this, and far more than this, you may see in the commonest woods round Lyndhurst, in Sloden, in Mark Ash, or Bratley.

Then, too, there is that perpetual change which is ever going on, every shower and gleam of sunshine tinting the trees with colour from the tender tones of April and May, through the deep green of June, to the russet-red of autumn. Each season ever joins in this sweet conspiracy to oppress the woods with loveliness.

Taking a more special view, and looking at the district itself, we must remember that it is situated on the Upper and Middle Eocene, and presents all the best features of the Tertiary formation. Its hills may not be high, but they nowhere sink into tameness, whilst round Fordingbridge, and Goreley, and Godshill, they resemble, in degree, with their treeless, rounded forms, shaggy with heath and the rough sedge of the fern, parts of the half-mountainous scenery near the Fifeshire Lomonds.

On the sea-coast near Milton, rise high gravel-capped cliffs,

10