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the grain being like that of the chestnut, and to this day old carpenters 

 may be heard to speak of chestnut oak as now no longer to be met with. 



I myself, when a boy, saw some of the piles which formed the founda- 

 tion of old London Bridge taken up out of the bed of the river, I think in 

 1831, when the bridge was being taken down ; the wood was as hard as iron, 

 and as sound, apparently, as on the day the piles were driven— more than 600 

 years before ! And we have distinct evidence that those piles were of sess. 

 oak. 



In the year 1844 a huge canoe was brought up from the bottom of one of 

 the small boggy lakes S. E. of Cavan, in Ireland. This canoe had been hollowed 

 out of a trunk of sess. oak ; it measured 40 feet in length, 4 feet 3 inches in 

 diameter at the one end, and about 3 feet at the other. The tree from which 

 it was fashioned must have measured at the least 21 feet in girth at the 

 base, and 15 feet at the height of 40 feet from the ground. No one can say 

 what was the age of that canoe, but some of our geologists would probably 

 count it by thousands of years, and yet the wood was sound ! 



It may be considered that the timber used in our churches and dwelling 

 houses, if of later date than the middle of the 16th century, may sometimes 

 be ped. oak, but earlier than that is invariably sess,, and with regard to large 

 beams, I do not think you will find anywhere one of ped. of 100 years old. 

 The great beams in the curious wooden tower of my own church at Strettou 

 are all sess. ;some of them are forty feet in length, and they are all perfectly 

 sound, although the rain often penetrates to them. 



But now, setting aside the extreme durability of the Q. sess., and 

 granting for a moment (which I by no means allow) that the timber of the 

 ped. is equally durable, still, in point of profit from planting, there can be 

 no question, inasmuch as the rate of growth of the sess. is so far greater. I 

 have searched in vain for published evidence of the fact, but fact it is. From 

 my own observation, I believe that at the lowest the annual growth of the 

 sess. exceeds that of the ped. as much as 5 to 4. 



What, then, can be given as the reason why the Q. ped. is so universal in 

 these islands and the sess. so rare ? Why the former, with its gnarled and low 

 spreading habit, should be looked upon as the type of the English oak by 

 painters and poets, and indeed by every one, while the sess. is almost un- 

 known ? Is it that the ped. has good qualities which the other is without ? 

 We have seen that it has not. The fact is, the finest and best timber has 

 been long ago used up by those who knew its value, and the inferior is left on 

 our hands. The sess. is the timber tree, the ped. the picturesque ; and the 

 timber tree has been felled, while the other has been left standing. Where 

 your population is the largest there you may expect to find fewest sessUi- 

 flora oaks, as witnessed by its scarcity in the south-eastern counties (which 

 are timber counties), and its comparative abundance in North Wales, as I men- 

 tioned before. 



