d of counting were
called _"nine-days."_ And the reason the Court sits "at Twelve
o'clock at noon" is because the Druid day began at noon. Even
now, within ten miles of where I write, the children on Minchinhampton
Common, on the Cotteswold hills, keep up _"old May Day,"_
which was the opening of the Druid year, though they are ignorant
of this. Boys and girls arm themselves on that day with boughs
of the beech, and go through certain games with them; but
exactly as the clock strikes _twelve_ they throw them away,
under pain of being stigmatized as _"May fools!"_

Well has Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, that _"All_ things
are _in all_ things!" Even this commonplace list of Court
days in the Forest of Dean becomes a beautiful poem when
the light of such a past shines on it; just as the veriest dust
of the Krakatoan volcano evolves itself into every color
of the rainbow when it rises into the sunset sky.

Since writing this paper I find that Philip Baylis, the Verderer
of the Forest of Dean, has kindly sent three or four dozen
of young oak trees from the Government plantations, to Washington,
in order that they may be planted there and in some other
places in the United States, to begin the century with. The
State Department of Agriculture has arranged for the planting
of these oaks, and the periodical record of their measurements,
so that a valuable basis will be established for an experiment
that may be carried on for a century, or more; and we, the
archaeologists of the nineteenth century, shall have wiped
away the stigma implied in the old Aberdeen Baillie's remark,
that as _Posteerity_ had never done anything for us, we ought
not to do anything for _posteerity!_

The Earl of Ducie has sent, accompanying these Forest of Dean
oaks, four small plants, seedlings from the great Chestnut
Tree on his Estate at Tortworth; the largest and oldest of
its sort in Great Britain. It measures forty-nine feet round
the trunk.

Leaving the Speech House for Coleford and Newland we descend
a steep hill for half a mile, and crossing the rail at the
Station we begin to ascend the opposite rise through the woods.
As the carriage climbs slowly up we keep on the lookout for
the margin-stones of the Roman paving which here and there
show through the modern metaled surface--pieces fifteen to
twenty inches long by about five inches in thickness, and
set so deep in the ground that eighteen hundred years' wear
has never moved them.