We asked him why the lanes in Devonshire were so much below
the surface of the land, and he said they had been constructed in that
way in very ancient times to hide the passage of cattle and produce
belonging to the British from the sight of their Saxon oppressors. He
complained strongly of the destruction of ferns by visitors from
populous places, who thought they would grow in their gardens or
back-yards, and carried the roots away with them to be planted in
positions where they were sure to die. In later years, it was said,
young ladies and curates advertised hampers of Devonshire ferns for sale
to eke out their small incomes; and when this proved successful, regular
dealers did the same, and devastated woods and lanes by rooting up the
ferns and almost exterminating some of the rarer kinds; but when the
County Councils were formed, this wholesale destruction was forbidden.
[Illustration: SHARPHAM ON THE DART.]
We had a fairly straight course along the river for two or three miles,
and on our way called to see an enormous wych-elm tree in Sharpham Park,
the branches of which were said to cover a quarter of an acre of ground.
It was certainly an enormous tree, much the largest we had seen of that
variety, for the stem was about sixteen feet in girth and the leading
branches about eighty feet long and nine feet in circumference.
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