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Page 39
Many old superstitions are connected with the hazel. Hazel-rods were
used to "divine" for water and minerals by professors of an art which
received the crack-jaw title of Rhabdomancy. Having tried our own hand
at Rhabdomancy, we are able to say that the freaks of the divining-rod
in sensitive fingers are sometimes as curious as those of a table among
table-turners; and are probably susceptible of similar explanations.
The Larch (_Larix Europ�a_, &c.). Though traceable in England for two
hundred years, it is within this century that the larch has been
extensively cultivated for profit. The exact date of its introduction
from the mountain ranges of some other part of Europe is not known, but
there is a popular tradition that it was first brought to Scotland with
some orange-trees from Italy, and having begun to wither under hot-house
treatment, was thrown outside, where it took root and throve thereafter.
The wood of full-grown larch-trees is very valuable. To John, Duke of
Athol, Scotland is indebted for the introduction of larch plantations on
an enormous scale. He is said to have planted 6500 acres of
mountain-ground with these valuable trees, which not only bring in heavy
returns as timber, but so enrich the ground on which they grow, by the
decayed _spicula_ or spines which fall from them, as to increase its
value in the course of some years eight or tenfold. The Duke was buried
in a coffin made of larch-wood! This sounds as if the merits of the
larch-tree had been indeed a hobby with him, but when one comes to
enumerate them one does not wonder that a man should feel his life very
usefully devoted to establishing so valuable a tree in his native
country, and that the pains and pride it brought him should have
awakened sentiment enough to make him desire to make his last cradle
from his favourite tree.
Larch-wood is light, strong, and durable. It is used for beams and for
ship-building, for railroad-sleepers and mill-axles, for water-pipes,
and for panels for pictures. Evelyn says that Raphael, the great
painter, painted many of his pictures on larch-wood. It will stand in
heat and wet, under water and above ground. It yields good turpentine,
but trees that have been tapped to procure this are of no use afterwards
for building purposes. The larch is said not to make good masts for
ships, but its durability in all varieties of temperature and changes of
weather make it valuable for vine-props. When made of larch-poles these
are never taken up as hop-poles are. Year after year the vines climb
them and fade at their feet, and they are said to have outlasted at
least one generation of vine-growers.
In "little woods" the larches are planted very close, so that they may
"spindle up" and become tall before they grow thick. They are then used
for hop-poles and props of various kinds.
The Oak (_Quercus robur_, &c.) is pre-eminently a British tree. Of its
beauty, size, the venerable age it will attain, and its historical
associations, we have no space to speak here, and our young readers are
probably not ignorant on the subject.
The durability of its wood is proverbial. The bark is also of great
value, and though the slow growth of the oak in its earlier years
postpones profit to the planter, it does so little harm to other wood
grown with it (being in this respect very different from the beech),
that profitable coppice-wood and other trees may be grown in the same
plantation.
The age at which the oak should be felled for ship-timber, &c., depends
on many circumstances, and is fixed by different authorities at from
eighty to a hundred and fifty years.
Oaks are said to be more liable than other trees to be struck by
lightning.
Oak-coppices or "little woods" are cut over at from twelve to thirty
years old. The bark is valuable as well as the wood.
The Pine (_Pinus sylvestris_, &c.), like the larch, will flourish on
poor soils. It is valuable as a protection for other trees. The
varieties and variations of this tree are very numerous.
It is a very valuable timber-tree, the wood being loosely known as
"deal"; but "deals" are, properly speaking, planks of pine-wood of a
certain thickness, "boards" being the technical name for a thicker kind.
Pine trunks are used for the masts of ships. "In the north of Russia and
in Lapland the outer bark is used, like that of the birch, for covering
huts, for lining them inside, and as a substitute for cork for floating
the nets of fishermen; and the inner bark is woven into mats like those
made from the lime-tree. Ropes are also made from the bark, which are
said to be very strong and elastic, and are generally used by the
fishermen."
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