After spending so many years of his life among trees, it is natural that the keeper should feel a special interest, almost an affection for them. A branch ruthlessly torn down, a piece of bark stripped from the trunk with no possible object save destruction, a nail driven in—perhaps to break the teeth of the saw when at last the tree comes to be cut up into planks—these things annoy him almost as much as if the living wood were human and could feel. For this reason, he too, like the members of the hunt, cordially detests the use of wire for fencing, now becoming so frequent. It cuts into the trees, and checks their growth and spoils their symmetry, if it does not actually kill them.
Sometimes the wire, which is stout and strong, is twisted right round the stem of a young oak, say a foot or more in diameter, which is thus made to play the part of a post. A firmer support could not be found; but as the tree swells with the rising sap, and expands year by year, the iron girdle circling about it does not ‘give’ or yield to this slow motion. It bites into the bark, which in time curls over, and so actually buries the metal in the growing wood. Now this cannot but be injurious to the tree itself, and it is certainly unsightly.
