THE OAK FAMILY. 369 



The oak, from its great and impressive size, the vast age which it attains, and 

 the hardness and durability of its timber, is in temperate countries universally 

 acknowledged the king of trees, holding the same position with regard to other 

 plants, that the lion does among quadrupeds, and the eagle among birds. Many 

 other trees equal it in picturesque beauty, and others again are not inferior in 

 the quality of their wood, but the oak seems to stand alone in having these 

 advantages combined. It is generally eighteen or twenty years old before it 

 begins to bear acorns, a circumstance prophetic of its great longevity. The 

 ordinaiy height is sixty to eighty feet, and the maximum age fifteen centuries.* 

 No tree is subject to such great variety, either in the form of the individual 

 leaves, of which it seems impossible to find two exactly alike, or in general figure 

 and aspect, and conditions of life. Stand upon some sweet hUl-side, where you 

 may look down as from the sky upon their rich round crests, and see the green 

 sward of the valley and opposite slope, mellowed with the moving shadows, 

 and if it be summer, some trees shall be dark green, others shall be pale; if it be 

 autumn, some shall be fast fading and almost leafless, while others are still in 

 their glory; and if it he spring, while one sort is in full leaf, the buds of others 

 are only beginning to burst. The oak is interesting too in the great and curious 

 variety of its inhabitants. The "oak-apples" of May and June, the "currant- 

 galls" of early summer, the "oak-spangles" that so beautifully ornament the 

 under side of the leaves in autumn, and the " artichoke-galls " that are often 

 found terminating the twigs at the same season, are the results of the visits of as 

 many different kinds of insects, all of which find in this supreme tree a congenial 

 abiding place, while the entomologist reckons those that rest or feed upon it by 

 hundreds. There is a variety of the oak with variegated leaves. An individual 

 of this kind stands at the end of the hedge of yews beside Mobberley Old Hall. 



6. Sessile-fruited Oak — {Quercus sessiliflora.) 



Woods and hedges, common, but not so general as the Quercus 

 pedunculata. About Clifton. Banks of the Irwell, near Agecroft 

 Bridge. Haughton Vale. Stalybridge Brushes. Plantations about 



Bowdon. Fl. May. 



E. B. xxvi. 1845. 



Distinguished by the long stalks of the leaves, and the almost total absence of 

 peduncles to the acorns. It is considered a " spurious " or inferior oak, as to 

 timber, but the question is an open one, as also its specific difference from the 

 •pedunculata, with which some authors unite it. That there is in reahty only one 

 species of oak indigenous to Britain, and that the two names peduncul&ta and 

 sessiliflora are representatives merely of the extreme varieties, is rendered highly 

 probable by the existence of an intermediate form, which unites the characters of 

 both the others, and is registered by Mr. Leighton, in his "Shropshire Flora," 



* See on these points, and for a variety of information respecting old trees, and 

 on the leases of life generally in nature, "Life, its Nature, Varieties, and 

 Phenomena." Chapter viii. Ed. 2. 



26 



