18C QUERCUS. 



mosses in our lowlands and in our niuirs*. These may have been 

 contemporaries with those which the aborigines hollowed out with fire 

 to make their canoes. There is a long interval between the sub- 

 fossil specimens and any that now survive w^ith us. Indeed there 

 is no oak within our district of traditional or historical celebrity. 

 About the largest I have heard of is one at Blackadder, which, in 

 1836, was nearly 80 feet in height, and 12| feet in circumference at 

 about 4 feet from the ground. Some names carry us further back. 

 In ancient times the Pease-burn was called Aikieside burn, from the 

 coppice of oaks which clothed its eastern bankf . It abounds there 

 yet, and in the adjacent deans. We find plenty at Abbey St. Ba- 

 thans, the lineal descendants of a native race ; on Yevering Bell ; 

 and in many other banks of deans among the Lammermuirs and 

 Cheviots. Fenwick wood appears to have been immemorially famous 

 for its Oaks. So late as 1 763, there were for sale in Fenwick Park 

 1926 oaks ready for the axe, and "very fit for ship-building." 

 Raine's N. Durham, p. 202. 



The picture is imaginary, but there is a sterling vigour in the lines 

 in which Bishop Hall describes the dietary and cates of our abori- 

 gines when still salvage men, that I am tempted to quote them : — 



" Time was, that whiles the autumne-fall did last. 

 Our liuugrie sires gap'd for the falling mast. 

 Could no unhusked acorne leaue the tree, 

 But there was challenge made whose it might be. 

 And if some nice and Hquorous appetite 

 Desir'd more daintie dish of rare delite. 

 They scal'd the stored crab with clasped knee, 

 Till they had sated their delicious ee. 

 Or search'd the hopefull thicks of hedgy-rows. 

 For brierie berries, hawes, or sowrer sloes : 

 Or when they meant to fare the fiu'st of all. 

 They lick'd oake-leaues besprint with houy-fall. 

 As for the thrise three-angled beech-nut shell. 

 Or chesnut's armed huske, and hid kernel], 

 Nor squire durst touch, the lawe would not aiford. 

 Kept for the court, and for the king's owue board." 



Our forefathers drew auguries from the Oak : — 



" Wlien the C9aft puts on his gosling gray, 

 'Tis time to sow Barley night and day." 



* Mr. Winch says that " enormous trunks and branches " are dug out 

 of the peat-mosses " even among the recesses of the Cheviot mountains, a 

 district which is now destitute of Oak." Essay Geogr. Dist. p. 6. This is 

 incorrect. Oaks of small size occur in many of their recesses. — " Eight 

 or ten feet below the surface of the moss in Jordan-law, there is a bed of 

 wood, consisting wholly of hard wood, out of which bed oaks have been 

 dug of a very great size, measuring, in one instance, twelve feet in jieri- 

 phery." Stat. Ace. Berwicks. Westrutber, p. 66. 



t Akeld, at the base of the Cheviots, may have its name from the same 

 source. See Carr in Trans. Tynes. N. Field Club, ii. p. 150. 



