263 



at the top, which make the table shaped head, which is the characteristic of 

 old trees of their kind. The lower foUage of these trees has been injured by 

 others, now happily cut away. 



Keeping still to the North side of the house, which we know to have been 

 bare of trees at the beginning of the century, the tape thrown round a very, 

 fine growing Sessiliflora oak, named "Bolton's Oak," with a straight clear bole, 

 gave the gii-th of 8.3. This tree is growing luxuriantly. It is now 73 feet high, 

 with a diametric spread of branches of 57 feet. Another weU grown Sessiliflora 

 oak, farther from the ho\ise, measures 6.3 in girth, and a sweet Chestnut, with 

 boughs dropping to the ground, next it, measured 10ft. 9in., and two others 

 8.9 and 9.3 respectively. Still measuring, because they are there, on the North 

 side of the Croquet grovmd, a Turkey Oak, ivy grown, and with loose straggling 

 boughs, gave 7.10, and a birch 5.8; and two Hemlock Spruces prettily looked 

 down upon from the drive, 5.5 and 3 feet. Crossing the drive to the house 

 we have a Cedar of Lebanon planted in 1821, which gives a girth of 10.5, as the 

 result of rather more than half a century gi-owth, and another ivy covered near 

 it measures 6.9. Near these cedars are three Scotch Firs, which are very 

 ornamental trees, though of no very great size. They measure 9ft., 7.5, and 

 6.4 in girth respectively. They present clear straight boles from 30 to 50 feet 

 high, whose characteristic red colour is admirably contrasted with the dull 

 deep green foliage of some evergreen oaks (Quercus ilex) near them and the 

 brighter tints of the beech tree (9.3), laurels and hollies in the back ground. 

 One of these evergreen oaks with its dense robes of ivy, clusters very pictu- 

 resquely. It measures 12.1 in girth. Three others standing forward in the 

 open ground— measuring 5.3; 5.4; and 5.9 respectively— would doubtless be 

 called generally well grown trees of good shape. Your Commissioner thinks 

 them stiff and formal, but then he has no gieat admiration for this oak, since 

 evergreen though it be, it wears in winter so duU, and sombre, and melancholy 

 an aspect that its fohage might as well be absent for anything it adds to the 

 cheerfulness of the scene when other leaves are away ; indeed he values it 

 chiefly for its great usefulness as a perennial screen, and for the deep neutral 

 back gro\md tint it gives in the shrubbery during summer and autumn. In old 

 age, or after misfortunes these oaks are often very picturesque, and surely the 

 pruning saw might do much to lessen the bunchy formality of younger trees. 

 The acorns of the Ilex Oak have none of the bitter taste of the acorns from 

 our ordinary oaks. Virgil (Georgics I. 147) speaks of this fruit as having been 

 eaten by mankind, before they began to raise grain crops : — 



" Prima Ceres ferro mortales vertere terras 

 Instituit ; cum jam glandes atque arbuta sacrse 

 Deficerent sylvse, et victum Dodona negaret." 



Don Quixote lauds these acorns "fs a sweet and pleasant fniit which in the 



golden age man had only to raise his hand and cull."— Pt. 1. c. 11. Possibly 



in that age they had no objection to the taste of astringency. The Ilex acorns 



certainly contain too much tannin for degenerate modem palates. 



Passing a sycamore, 6ft. lOin., with mistletoe upon it, in itself a rarity. 



