A small point in the essay, which interests me, concerns
that attractive alien, the larch, beloved of Tennyson but hated by Wordsworth, who published an angry protest against its un-English greenery. Lord Crawford, who says nothing of this, but has dug up a poem (William Marshall's " Review of the Landscape") published in 1795, three years before the Lyrical Ballads, in which we are urged to "crop the aspiring larch's saucy head." Incidentally it is not quite " the only deciduous conifer we possess." The deciduous cypress is a very lovely tree, and much more widely spread than I thought when writing about it recently. Has any botanist ever ex- plained the oddity of its so-called " elbows " ? And in one other regard we are better off than Lord Crawford suggests.. The raven is now a very common bird throughout the West ; and one acquaintance of mine has found within the last few years several score of bitterns' nests.
IN BEACH TH031AS.
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