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The Rev. G. H. Cobnewall thought that many of the finest oaks which 

 were to be found in the county were certainly sessiliflora. The roofs of 

 many of our oldest buildings, as at Chester and in Westminster Abbey, Trere 

 sessUiflora, The sessilitlora might grow faster than the pedunculata, but he 

 would not go so far as to say that it grew taller. 



Mr. Thomas Blashill said : It is veiy well known that figures are 



even more deceptive than facts, and, of all figures, those derived from 



experiment are liable to be the most deceptive ; for though the experiment 



may be worth nothing at all, the figures come upon us with a force which no 



other kind of evidence can have. This is very much the case with respect to 



this old subject of controversy, which has been cropping up in one form or 



another for something like two centuries — from Evelyn's time at least — and 



which Mr. Key has very usefully revived in such a shape that we can 



discuss it. It is indeed of interest in a literary much more than in a practical 



point of view, for practical experience has long since — I believe always — been 



decidedly in favour of Quercus pedunculata. There is this feature in what 



has been written : hardly anyone goes the length of stating that he knows 



of his own knowledge anything about his subject, but when one considers 



the difficulty of arriving at any experimental knowledge of this matter, this 



is not so very extraordinary ; and it is not surprising that botanical and other 



writers should be content to copy what has been previously written without 



any testing of the statements, and often without acknowledging the source 



from which they have copied, so that one is led to take that for a new and 



confirmatory opinion which is only the repetition of an old one. Nearly a 



hundred years since the Hon. Daines Baiiington was labouring to prove 



that much of the old timber which had long been considered to be chestnut 



was really a variety of oak, and this narrowed the question to its present 



form of the comparative value of the two varieties. Mr. Key has well shown 



the random manner in which writers have treated this subject, and I am only 



going one step further than he goes if I suggest that we put aside the authors 



he has quoted, as well as those whom he has neglected, for they contradict 



each other, and also themselves, in a manner that is rather confusing, as to 



the idea that all examples of timber older than the middle of the sixteenth 



century are of sessilUlora oak, including that found in the Irish bogs and in 



the piles of old London bridge. I can only say that if there is the least truth 



in the test furnished by the medullary rays, very nearly all our old timber 



must be pedunculata. If not so, why should such curiosity be excited by a 



reputed case of the use of chestnut or seisUiflora oak ? When some alterations 



were being made in the roof of Westminster Hall, about 20 years since, the 



carpenters were all alive about the wood, and bets were won on the question 



whether it was oak or chestnut. Going further back, Daines Barrington 



says he heard a wager laid as to some reputed chestnut timber found in an 



old house in Chancery-lane, which proves its rarity, I have specimens from 



many churches fuU of the cross-grain, which is so feebly developed in sessilijlora 



