Tolkien stated that primeval human understanding was communion with other living things; critics note that Middle-earth was set in the distant past, when primeval forests still existed. Forests play varying roles in his books. In The Hobbit, Mirkwood is the dark forbidding forest of fairy tale. In The Lord of the Rings, forests are more complex; some trees are woken up by the Elves, while others are going bad. Fangorn forest is the realm of Treebeard, a tree-giant or Ent, who herds trees including the Huorns which are halfway between Ents and trees, either becoming animated or reverting to becoming treelike.