And an excellent example of the effect of well-chosen words, to express the sound produced by the subject referred to, occurs in the _Morte d'Arthur_: "The many-knotted waterflags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge." Blackmore's passage in _Lorna Doone_, describing the superlative ease and speed of Tom Faggus's mare, when John Ridd as a boy was allowed to ride her--after a rough experience at the beginning of the venture--is, though printed as prose, perhaps better poetry than most similar efforts. To emphasize its full force it may be allowable to divide the phrases as follows: "I never had dreamed of such delicate motion, Fluent, and graceful, and ambient, Soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers, But swift as the summer lightning. I sat up again, but my strength was all spent, And no time left to recover it, And though she rose at our gate like a bird, I tumbled off into the mixen." The last line is a delightful bathos, adding immensely to the completeness of the catastrophe. In spring the beech is the most beautiful of forest trees, putting forth individual horizontal sprays of tender green from the lower branches about the end of April as heralds of the later full glory of the tree. These increase day by day upwards in verdant clouds, until the whole unites into a complete bower of dense greenery. The beech is known as the "groaning tree," because the branches often cross each other, and where the tree is exposed to the wind sometimes groan as they rub together. The rubbing often causes a wound where one of the branches will eventually break off, or occasionally automatic grafting takes place, and they unite. In the Verderer's Hall at Lyndhurst specimens are to be seen which have crossed and joined a second time, so that a complete hollow oval, or irregular circle of the wood could be cut out of the branch. Estates where extensive beech woods existed have been bought by speculative timber dealers, who shortly installed a gang of wood cutters and a steam saw, on which the timber was sawn into suitable pieces, to be afterwards turned on a lathe into chair legs and other domestic furniture, and very often finally dyed to represent mahogany. There are beeches in the New Forest which vie with the oak for premier place, measuring over 20 feet in circumference, and the mast together with the acorns affords abundant harvest, or "ovest," as it is called, for the commoners' pigs. There was a curious saying in use by persons on the road to Pershore, when asked their destination. In a good plum year the reply was, "Pershore, where d'ye think?" And in a year of scarcity, "Pershore, God help us!" The same expressions were formerly current regarding Burley in the New Forest referring to the abundance or scarcity of beech-mast and acorns, called collectively "akermast."