40 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Such a tree I know. A white oak of vast proportions and imposing 

 majesty. On an old Virginia plantation in Hanover County it stands out 

 in a field, a patriarch of the forest, surrounded by its progeny — the ofifspring 

 of its later years. Girdled by them like an ancient chieftain surrounded 

 by his body-guard, it stands, one of the last relics of the primeval forests of 

 Eastern Virginia, whose glory awed the first Anglo-Saxon settlers when they 

 came to this virgin land. 



The original survey of this land for William Nelson based on the King's 

 Warrants is in the writer's possession, carrying so many acres of ''King's land'^ 

 in the ''forks of Pamunkey;" lying between the Little River and the New- 

 found River, and it has always since been in the possession of the family. 

 From William Nelson the land with this tree, already noted, came down to 

 Thomas Nelson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary 

 War Governor of Virginia, and Commander of Virginia's forces. Here he 

 died at the age of forty-nine, and this oak once shaded the first stable-yard 

 of the plantation. No trace of the stable remains; save this majestic monu- 

 ment which has survived several wars and many generations. One of his 

 granddaughters, now ninety years old, remembers to have heard the oldest 

 son of General Nelson, to whom this estate descended, say that he would 

 never cut the tree down because his father admired it so. Thus the tree was 

 in its prime several generations ago, and Totapotamoi children must have 

 plaj^ed beneath its sheltering arms. Today at a foot from the ground it is 

 not less than eight feet in diameter, and cannot be less than five feet at any 

 height below the branches. It must shade at least a third of an acre and 

 beneath its boughs the cattle find their favorite refuge alike from the summer 

 heat or the winter blasts. 



In my youth the great tree stood alone in its majesty in an open field, 

 a model of the genus from whose endurance came the term that since the 

 buildings of Rome has stood for robust strength. The field when last culti- 

 vated was left, like so much of our Virginia land, in corn-beds and along 

 through the '80s grew up in pines; but above this parvenue growth towered 

 ever the "Big Oak" and when ten years ago the writer cleared the field again, 

 he found that the old tree had surrounded itself with a numerous progeny. 

 It stood in the midst of a dense thicket of young white-oaks ranged in lines 

 along between the rows where the acorns had rolled and sprouted, those 

 nearest the boll being spindling and weak, while those on the outer edge of 

 the circle are vigorous and robust. 



On the south side alone the oaks are supplanted largely by cedars, show- 

 ing where the birds sought the comparative shelter of the south side of the 

 tree and dropped the seed. Glancing down the rows little vistas lead to the 

 great trunk but viewed from the side, the grove is impenetrable. 



I have been advised by friends to thin out the grove about the old 

 patriarch, but as he is lusty and robust, and has survived alike the crowding 

 of his earlier generations and the solitariness of his later life, and as he has 

 without aid from man reproduced for himself in his old age a hundred children, 

 I shall let him abme to enjoy in his own way his glory, and to testify to 

 succeeding generations the majestic grandeur of the Virginia oaks. 



