Walking in the woods, we met the old man standing over the prostrate form of a fallen monster that had been uprooted by the wind. He was about to lop off the branches, and was trimming the bole with an axe. The tree had brought several others with it of younger growth, and he had just finished clearing to obtain a space wherein to work. Black bryony berries were twined about the lower branches, as were the dead leaves of honeysuckle. These are among the natural enemies of the old man, as he considers them injurious to timber. His woods are wide, and constitute his little world. There is little in or of them which he does not know, even to the flowers and birds. For these he has quaint provincial names of his own. Thus he speaks of the fallowchat, the nettle-creeper, and the reed-wren--meaning the wheatear, white-throat, and reed-warbler. The frail anemone he knows as the wind-flower, coltsfoot is one of his rustic remedies for coughs, and the early purple orchids are to him "crow's feet." His "little red mouse that rustles among the dead leaves and is coloured like a hare" is our wood-mouse; and sometimes he finds among the hazel branches the ball-like nests of the dormice. He knows that wherever fungi grows there is death, and the tree lighted up by the brightly-coloured bosses he marks with a red cross, which is as signing the warrant of its doom. He follows the yaffle, and wherever it pecks the trees he knows that decay has begun within. This applies to all the woodpeckers, who are infallible valuers of growing timber, and all trees which they attack are marked out for the axe. Often on the outside the boles are apparently sound, and it is hard to believe that the heart-wood is decayed; but the winged wood-prophets never err. It matters not what living thing crosses our path, the old man names it, even to the insects. He tells how these are instrumental in producing the oak-galls, and points out the insidious attacks and borings of weevils. Of all trees the elm has most enemies. He tears off a bit of bark from a still growing tree, and reveals a labyrinth of channels radiating on two sides from a central line. The _Scolytus_ he simply calls "elm-borer," though from his conversation it is plain that he is a close observer, and knows the whole life-history of the insect. And thus, in addition to his special knowledge of woodcraft, he knows the time of the coming of the birds, of the retiring of the insect hosts, and the habitats of the flowers.