Larger berries--some red, some green, on the same bunch--cluster on the vines of the bryony. The white bryony, whose leaf is not unlike that of the grape, has a magical reputation, and the cottage folk believe its root to be a powerful ingredient in love potions, and also poisonous. They identify it with the mandrake. If growing in or close to a churchyard its virtues are increased, for, though becoming fainter as they lengthen, the shadows of the old superstitions linger still. Red nightshade berries--not the deadly nightshade, but the `bitter-sweet'-- hang sullenly among the bushes where this creeping plant has trailed over them. Here and there upon the bank wild gooseberry and currant bushes may be found, planted by birds carrying off ripe fruit from the garden. A wild gooseberry may sometimes be seen growing out of the decayed `touchwood' on the top of a hollow withy-pollard. Wild apple trees, too, are not uncommon in the hedges. The beautiful rich colour of the horse-chestnut, when quite ripe and fresh from its prickly green shell, can hardly be surpassed; underneath the tree the grass is strewn with the shells, where they have fallen and burst. Close to the trunk the grass is worn away by the restless trampling of horses, who love the shade its foliage gives in summer. The oak-apples which appear on the oaks in spring--generally near the trunk--fall off in the summer, and lie shrivelled on the ground not unlike rotten cork, or black as if burned. But the oak-galls show thick on some of the trees, light green, and round as a ball; they will remain on the branches after the leaves have fallen, turning brown and hard, and hanging there till the spring comes again. One of the cottagers in the adjacent hamlet collects these brown balls and strings them upon wire, making flower-stands and ornamental baskets for sale. They seem to appear in numbers upon those oak bushes rather than trees which spring up when an oak has been cut down but the stump has not been grubbed up. These shoots at first often bear leaves of great size, many times larger than the ordinary oak leaf; some are really immense, measuring occasionally fourteen or fifteen inches in length. As the shoots grow into a bush the leaves diminish in size and become like those of the tree.