94 POLLARDS AND HOW TO TREAT THEM; WITH SPECIAL
to be hoped that in a few years we may have in Epping Forest a good
store of spear hornbeams illustrating the proper form of the species.
Sir Fowell Buxton has given me his opinion, which seems highly
probable, that pollarding was preceded by coppicing; and that the latter
practice gave way to the former owing to the damage done by game to
the young shoots when springing from the stump. The familiar
fact that pollards of considerable age very commonly spring from the
ground in groups would thus be explained by their having sprung
originally as coppice-shoots from a single stump. Either deer and
cattle, or ground game, or both, may have been the cause of the
change of practice.
As with other things, there are two ways to pollard a tree, the
right way and the wrong way. If a tree is to be pollarded, the
proper method of procedure is to cut off the main stem and branches
a little above the fork. It was not, however, I suppose, to be
expected that the commoner desirous of firewood should think of
anything beyond getting the maximum quantity with the minimum
of trouble, so that our pollard hornbeams have mostly been cut below
the fork, at the point indicated by the line in the middle figure. The
consequence is that, instead of repairing the injury by healthy growth,
as in the right hand figure, we have diseased misshapen heads, like
that in the left hand figure, with mop-like branches and too often a
rotten heart to the trunk. Damp collects among the warty
excrescences of the head; and those who have accompanied our
autumn fungus forays know the abundance and variety of the
Agarici, Boleti, Bulgarias, and Tremellas that hasten the decay of the
rotten stems they frequent. Insect larvae, moreover, are perhaps
more likely to attack trees in such an unhealthy condition than when
thoroughly sound.
Similar motives of "economy" led, no doubt, to the dense over-
crowding of the pollards which characterised many parts of the
Forest at the time when it was taken over by the Corporation. So