Meanwhile, the brambles, which grew very fast, had pushed forward their prickly runners farther and farther from the hedges till they had now reached ten or fifteen yards.

The briars had followed, and the hedges had widened to three or four times their first breadth, the fields being equally contracted.

Starting from all sides at once, these brambles and briars in the course of about twenty years met in the centre of the largest fields.
Hawthorn bushes sprang up among them, and, protected by the briars and thorns from grazing animals, the suckers of elm-trees rose and flourished.

Sapling ashes, oaks, sycamores, and horse-chestnuts, lifted their heads.

Of old time the cattle would have eaten off the seed leaves with the grass so soon as they were out of the ground, but now most of the acorns that were dropped by birds, and the keys that were wafted by the wind, twirling as they floated, took root and grew into trees.