But that from the branches is best.

You may mark how at the base the bark is two inches thick, lessening to a few lines on the topmost boughs.

If it sticks a little, hammer it with the iron: it peels with a peculiar sound, and the juicy sap glistens white between.
It is this that, drying in the sun, gives the barked tree its colour: in time the wood bleaches paler, and after a winter becomes grey.

Inside, the bark is white streaked with brown; presently it will be all brown.
While some strip it, others collect the pieces, and with them build toy-like sheds of bark, which is the manner of stacking it.
From the peeled tree there rises a sweet odour of sap: the green mead, the green underwood and hawthorn around, are all lit up with the genial sunbeams.

The beautiful wind-anemones are gone, too tender and lovely for so rude an earth; but the wild hyacinths droop their blue bells under the wood, and the cowslips rise in the grass.