sir 



oak. And although, since I have heard Mr. Key's paper read, I have 

 examined all the old oak that I met with, both in this country and in 

 France, I have not seen by chance anything that looked like a piece of 

 aesailiflora. A piece of ©ne of the piles of old London Bridge is preserved in 

 the library at Guildhall ; it is as black as ink, and of the texture of horn ; 

 it is full of the medullary rays ; and upon examining a piece of Irish bog-oak, 

 I find them equally plentiful in it. [Specimens of old oak from various 

 churches in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Essex, and Norfolk, of the 14 th 

 and 15tb century, are exhibited to illustrate these remarks.] The fact is, that 

 the gi-eat durability of oak used in olden times is the result of careful selection, 

 felling, seasoning, and converting, and not of any peculiarity in the species — 

 for it would be diiEcult to find a piece of oak originally sound and kept well 

 exposed to the air that had seriously decayed. Damp is a greater enemy than 

 wet, and if timber is kept under close-boarded floors, or ceiled over in not 

 over weather-tight church roofs, it will go, whatever may be its species. A 

 piece of an oak rood screes, here, of the 15th century, is now as sound as at 

 first, and much harder than new oak, and it is 400 years old. Since I heard 

 that this subject was coming on for discussion, I have asked a few friends, 

 who are good observers, what they knew about the question. Singularly, the 

 first evidence I had of sessiUflora oak was from the Eastern Counties, where 

 Mr. Key believes it to be now extinct. Mr. R. M. Phipson, F.S.A. (of 

 Norwich), writes me thus : — 



" What I am aware of is this : There are two sorts of oak grown in Kast Anglia. 

 One a broad-Ie<aved one, which is very plain and straight in the grain, and is called 

 by workmen 'bastard oak.' The other is a much harder and better wood, with very 

 jagged leaves, and very fuU of ' figure,' often quite as much so as the best wainscot, and 

 is known as ' old English oak ' by mechanics. Both were certainly used in our old 

 church roofs, but the latter (that is pedunculata) by far the most extensively — probably 

 as 5 to 1." 



A member of the Severn Valley Club, (the Kev. "W. Purton,) writes thus : — 



" I have asked two carpenters here about the varieties of oak timber. They 

 recognise ' common ' and ' bastard ' oak, the latter having very little flower, and 

 resembling chestnut in the grain. This is worth fid. a foot for 1-inch boards, while 

 the common oak fetches Is. Of course they know nothing of the botanical differences 

 between the two trees, and seem to think that the bastard oak is only the common oak 

 of interior quality growing in hedgerows, Ac. They admit, however, that all the oak in 

 Bewdley forest is of the ' bastard ' kind, and I know that it is almost entirely 

 sessilifiora." 



It is to me utterly beyond belief that at any time the preference for sessiliHora 

 oak — even had it ever existed — could have reduced its quantity as we now see 

 it, for gnarled and coarse trees— quite useless as timber — would be still equal 

 to the increase of their species. I believe further that such an entire change 

 in opinion amongst workmen could not have taken place without leaving 

 some record or tradition at least to mark it. What is the great advantage of 

 oak over all other timber in respect of its strength apart from durability ? 

 It is not its great resistance to compression or tension in the direction of 

 its fibres, but in its great power of resisting strains, which cross the line of its 

 fibres. The old Gothic roofs were constructed in dependence upo.a the pro- 

 perty of the wood (although, singularly, the sessiUflora roof of Westminster 



