There is, too, an unearthly effect at times to be seen beneath them, so exaggerated as to remind one of the stage setting of a pastoral play, with all the enhancing artificial contrivance of light and shade. It is to be seen only on a brilliantly sunny day, where the contour of the space around the stem and below the branches takes the form of an arched cavern, flooded by a single shaft of sunlight, piercing the foliage at one particular spot, lighting up the floor carpeted with last year's red-brown leaves, and emphasizing the gloom of the walls and roof. Imagination instantly supplies the players, for a more perfect setting for Rosalind and Celia, Orlando and the melancholy Jaques, it would be impossible to conceive. It is said that the ancient Greeks could see with their ears and hear with their eyes, a privilege doubtless granted to the nature lover in all ages. In the Forest some of the most ancient and remarkable trees have borne for generations descriptive names such as the King and Queen oaks at Boldrewood, and the Eagle oak in Knightwood. The communion between human and tree life is well illustrated by a passage from Thoreau's _Walden_: "I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines." At Aldington a most valuable tree was the willow, or "withy," as it is called in Worcestershire, though in Hampshire the latter name is given to the Goat willow, or sallow ("sally," in Worcestershire), bearing the pretty blossoms known as palms, which in former times were worn by men and boys in country places on Palm Sunday. My brooks were bordered on both sides by pollard withies, the whole being divided into seven parts or annual cuts, so that, as they are lopped every seven years a cut came in for lopping each year. They were then well furnished with long and heavy poles, which were severed close to the head of the pollard with a sharp axe. When on the ground, the brushwood was cut off and tied into "kids" (faggots) for fire-lighting, the poles being made into hurdles or sold to the crate-makers in the potteries for crates in which to pack earthenware goods of all descriptions. The men employed at the lopping had to stand on the heads of the pollards, and it was sometimes quite an acrobatic feat to maintain their balance on a small swaying tree, or on one which overhung the water.