When, standing in the village street, your eye travels up that white
band, you can distinctly make out even at that distance a small,
solitary tree standing near the summit--an old thorn with an ivy growing
on it. My walks were often that way, and invariably on coming to that
point I would turn twenty yards aside from the road to spend half an
hour seated on the turf near or under the old tree. These half-hours
were always grateful; and conscious that the tree drew me to it I
questioned myself as to the reason. It was, I told myself, nothing but
mental curiosity: my interest was a purely scientific one. For how comes
it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in
such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries,
perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by
sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? The
seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner
does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the
roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavour it
has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up
amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs.
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