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of which is known to be very worthless. But what is of more importance to us is, that, de facto, the impostor abounds, and is propagated vigorously in the New Forest and other parts of Hampshire, in Norfolk, and the northern counties, and about London; and there is but too much reason to believe that the numerous complaints that were heard about our ships being infested with what was called, improperly enough, dry-rot, were owing to the introduction of this species of oak into the naval dockyards, where, we understand, the distinction was not even suspected. may thus be discriminated from the true old English oak: the acorn-stalks of the Robur are long and its leaves short, whereas the Sessiliflora has the acornstalks short and the leaves long; the acorns of the former grow singly, or seldom two on the same footstalk: those of the latter in clusters of two or three, close to the stem of the branch. We believe the Russian ships of the Baltic, that are not of larch or fir, are built of this species of oak; but if this were not the case, their exposure on the stocks, without cover, to the heat of summer, which, though short, is excessive, and the rifts and chinks, which fill up with ice and snow in the long winter, are enough to destroy the stoutest oak, and quite sufficient to account for their short-lived duration."

When the oak stands alone, it is a spreading rather than an elevated tree: in that situation the timber is also said to be more compact and firm, and the crooked arms of the trees are better adapted for shipbuilding than when the trees are close together. In thickly planted groups, the oak will reach an elevation of eighty or a hundred feet before it begins to decay; and in some of the choicer trees, forty, fifty, or even sixty feet may be found without a single lateral branch, and of such diameter that, even at the smaller extremity, they will square to eighteen inches or two feet. These are as well adapted for beams

and planking as the others are for crooked timbers; and, therefore, in order to secure a proper supply, not only for maritime, but for domestic purposes, it is desirable to have them in both situations.

The trunk of the detached oak acquires by far the greater diameter; some of the old hollow trees, most of which are of this description, having a diameter of as much as sixteen feet in the cavity, and still a shell of timber on the outside, sufficiently vigorous for producing leaves and even acorns. The age to which the oak can continue to vegetate, even after the core has decayed, has not been fully ascertained. But, in favourable situations, it must be very considerable. In the New Forest, Evelyn counted, in the sections of some trees, three hundred or four hundred concentric rings or layers of wood, each of which must have recorded a year's growth. The same celebrated planter mentions oaks in Dennington Park, near Newbury, once the residence of Chaucer, which could not have arrived at the size which they possessed in a less period than about three hundred years; and though he does not say upon what evidence the opinion is grounded, Gilpin notices, in his Forest Scenery, "a few venerable oaks in the New Forest, that chronicle their furrowed trunks ages before the Conquest.'

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Some out of the number of ancient oaks that are celebrated, it may not be uninteresting to mention : -One of the three in Dennington Park, the King's Oak, was fifty feet high before a bough or even a knot appeared, and the base of it squared five feet entirely solid; the Queen's Oak was straight as a line for forty feet, then divided into two immense arms, and the base of it squared to four feet; and Chaucer's Oak, said to have been planted by the poet, though inferior to the royal ones, was still a most stately tree. The Framlingham oak (Suffolk), used in the construction of the Royal Sovereign, was four feet nine inches

square, and yielded four square beams, each fortyfour feet in length. An oak felled at Withy Park, Shropshire, in 1697, was nine feet in diameter, without the bark; there were twenty-eight tons of timber in the body alone; and the spread of the top, from bough to bough, was one hundred and fortyfour feet. In Holt Forest, Hampshire, there was an oak, which, at seven feet from the ground, was thirty-four feet in circumference in 1759, and twenty years after, the circumference had not increased half an inch. Dr. Plott mentions an oak at Norbury, which was of the enormous circumference of fortyfive feet; and when it was felled, and lying flat upon the ground, two horsemen, one on each side the trunk, were concealed from each other. The same author mentions an oak at Keicot, under the shade of which four thousand three hundred and seventy-four men had sufficient room' to stand. The Boddington oak, in the Vale of Gloucester, was fifty-four feet in circumference at the base. The larger arms and branches were gone in 1783; and the hollow cavity was sixteen feet in its largest diameter, with the top formed into a regular dome; while the young twigs on the decayed top had small leaves about the size of those of the hawthorn, and an abundant crop of acorns. The hollow had a door and one window; and little labour might have converted the tree into a commodious, and rather a spacious room. Fairlop oak in Essex, though inferior in dimensions to the last mentioned, was a tree of immense size,being between six and seven feet in diameter, at three feet from the ground. Damory's oak in Dorsetshire was the largest oak of which mention is made. Its circumference was sixty-eight feet; and the cavity of it, which was sixteen feet long and twenty feet high, was, about the time of the Commonwealth, used by an old man for the entertainment of travellers, as an ale-house. The dreadful storm in the third year of

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last century shattered this majestic tree; and in 1755 the last vestiges of it were sold as firewood. An immense oak was dug out of Hatfield bog. It was a hundred and twenty feet in length, twelve in diameter at the base, ten in the middle, and six at the smaller end where broken off.

Some oaks have been as celebrated for being the records of historical events, as others have been for their magnitude, although a part of the celebrity may no doubt be fabulous. Not a hundred years ago, the oak in the New Forest, against which the arrow of Sir William Tyrrel glanced, before it killed William Rufus, is said to have been standing, though in such a state of decay, that Lord Delaware erected a monument to indicate the spot. The Royal Oak at Boscobell, in which Charles the Second concealed himself after the defeat at Worcester, has disappeared; and though several trees were raised from its acorns, the race seems now to be lost to vegetable history. An oak of still more venerable pretensions now stands, or lately stood, at Torwood Wood, in Stirlingshire, under the shadow of which the Scottish patriot Wallace is reported to have convened his followers, and impressed upon them, not only the necessity of delivering their country from the thraldom of Edward, but their power of doing it, if they were so determined. Gilpin mentions one, more ancient even than this-Alfred's oak at Oxford, which was a sapling when that great monarch founded the University. This cannot, of course, be implicitly credited; but still the very mention of such things proves, that the oak can reach an age several times exceeding that of the longest lived of the human

race.

Since oak was so much in demand, it has become an object of great attention to planters; and the plants are carefully reared by nurserymen from the acorns. If the saplings are to be of considerable size when

planted out in their permanent situations, they are several times transplanted in the nursery. The deformed ones are cut down to the ground, and then a young, vigorous, straight shoot is made, instead of that which was deformed. Some of those who have paid considerable attention to the subject are, however, of opinion, that although transplanting probably accelerates the growth a little, the advantage thereby gained is more than compensated by the deterioration of the timber, which is neither so strong, nor so durable, as that sown by the hand of nature, or where it is to be allowed to remain without transplanting.

Of the various European oaks, the Quercus pedunculata is the most esteemed on the continent. It is a magnificent tree, considerably taller than native oak. In the forests of Fontainebleau and of Compiègne there are at this day many trees of this species, the trunks of which measure from thirty to thirty-six feet in circumference at the base, and rise to the height of forty feet without a single branch. Beautiful as this species is, it produces, however, timber very inferior to our Quercus robur. It is probable that the species which is indifferently designated by French botanists Quercus robur, and Quercus sessiliflora, is, as stated in pages 6 and 7, a species entirely different from our real English oak; for the wood of the Quercus pedunculata is described by these writers as harder and more compact than that of the robur or sessiliflora. The Quercus alba of North America very much resembles the Quercus pedunculata. It is found in all the countries of the United States, from Florida up to Canada. It is the species chiefly used in shipbuilding, and for houses; and casks for liquors are principally made of it, as those of the red oak will only contain dry goods. Considerable quantities of this timber are imported into England. Parkinson

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