CHAP, Cv. CORYLA CEH. QUE!RCUS. 1757 
are found in different parts of it. Crockern Tor, which we have mentioned 
above, is one of the most remarkable of them, and is thus described by Car- 
rington :— 
* Not always thus 
Have hover’d, Crockern, o’er thy leafless scalp 
The silence and the solitude which now 
Oppresses the crush’d spirits; for I stand 
Where once the fathers of the forest held 
(An iron race) the parliament that gave 
The forest law. Ye legislators, nursed 
In laps of modern luxury, revere 
The venerable spot, where simply clad, 
And breathing mountain breezes, sternly sate 
The hardy mountain council.” 
Near this spot, tradition says, were anciently some old oaks, under which 
the Britons held their courts of judicature previously to the invasion of the 
Romans ; and under which the conference between the Saxons and the Britons 
took place, after which the latter gave up the kingdom, and retired into 
Wales. The oak trees, though the place is still called Wistman’s, or Welch- 
man’s, Wood, have long since been cut down, though there are still some 
huge gnarled stumps amidst loose rocks of granite; and on their decayed tops, 
thorns, brambles, &c., are shooting forth, forming altogether a most grotesque 
appearance. (See Mart. Mill., art. Woods.) These distorted and stunted 
remains, we are informed by Mr. Borrer, are all Q. pedunculata; and some 
idea may be formed of their appearance from the engraving given of them by 
Burt, in his notes to the second edition of Carrington’s Dartmoor. The trees 
in this wood are now none of them above 7 ft. high, though their trunks are 
more than 10 ft. in circumference. For the following account of this remark- 
able wood we are indebted to W. Borrer, Esq. :—“ Wistman’s Wood is still 
in existence. It is something more than a mile north of Two-Bridges, near 
the centre of Dartmoor, where it forms a narrow stripe, a quarter of a mile at 
least in length, along the western slope of a hill, at the foot of which runs a 
mountain brook, one of the branches of the West Dart. On the ridge of 
the hill are the Little Bee and the two Longaford Tors (the Great Longaford 
being a building-place of the raven); and the Crockern Tor, interesting to 
antiquaries, is on a lower part a little to the south-east. A few of the trees 
are scattered; but by far the greater part are packed, as it were, among the 
low blocks of granite that lie in abundance on the hill side; the gnarled and 
twisted stems reclining in the spaces between the rocks, and formed into an 
undistinguishable mass with them by a thick mat of mosses and lichens, of 
which the Anémodon curtipéndulum, bearing its very rare capsules in profu- 
sion, contributes a large proportion. I did not observe stems of any large 
size, but they display incontestable marks of great antiquity. The branches 
rise a very few feet above the rocks, and 1591 “a 
their twigs are very short, yet I found on 
them a tolerably vigorous crop of leaves 
and acorns.” (W. B.) Meavy’s Oak (fig. 
1591.) is also on Dartmoor. Our en- 
graving is taken from a drawing (kindly 
lent to us by W. Borrer, Esq.) which was 
made in 1833. The tree (which is stag- _ 
headed) is about 50 ft. high; the trunk, %_,. 
which is 27 ft. in circumference, is 
hollow, and it has held nine persons 
at one time. This oak is supposed ‘ 
to have existed in the time of Kin Son Sele — 
John. The Flitton Oak (fig. 1592.) stands singly on a spot where three 
roads meet, on an estate belonging to the Earl of Morley, in the parish 
of North Molton. It is supposed to be 1000 years old; and, within the 
memory of man, it was nearly twice its present height, which is now about 
45 ft. It is 33 ft. in circumference at about 1 ft. from the ground; and at 
about 7 ft. it divides into eight enormous limbs. The species is Q. sessiliflora. 
