The larch is always in evidence, and gives a resinous odour to the place, as does the sawdust by the bench, a rich brown pile, for very little of our hillside wood is white; most of it ranges from reddish-brown to mahogany colour. Though here is a small creamy-white gate in course of construction—merely a little wicket to keep the calves out of the orchard—that is made of straight, round branches, slit down the centre, so that one side of each is flat and the other semicircular. The design is simplicity itself, some uprights with a few cross-pieces to hold them together and suggest a trellis; yet the rich cream colour and the satiny surface of the wood make it a thing of distinct beauty. This is only a branch of the lime-tree, with the bark peeled off. In an ordinary way we seldom have a chance to notice the intrinsic beauty of wood itself. Of course we see it in its polished perfection when it comes to us in some choice piece of furniture, or panelling; but this is not exactly the beauty to which I refer. Each branch, each tree trunk, has, in its unpolished state, definite characteristics of its own, quite distinct from those we see in the finished product civilization regards as the one end to be aimed for. These characteristics may be rough, and are frequently rugged; but their appeal is often all the stronger for this fact. Look at the wonderful ribbing on the rind of this Spanish chestnut; what is it that wakes up in you when you study its lines and formation? You cannot say, yet you respond to it in an indefinable manner. These branches of apple-wood, only gnarled old things, twisted and crooked and all out of shape some people would say; yet you know that they would not have been nearly so lovely had they been straight as a dart. The larches with their strong bark showing grey and red and green, and furrowed like the sea sand—isn’t there something in this that calls to you from back recesses of your being, and reminds you of the time when you—no, not you, but your ancestors, centuries ago, lived not so much in cities and houses made with hands, as out of doors, finding mystery in the green-roofed aisles and the cathedral dimness of forests long since felled? To those of us who spend much time among these hills, each tree within the wood-house comes as a friend, with a definite personality and distinct association, and we regret its individual “going out,” even though we know it to be inevitable.