1774 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 
year 1696; and over the door of the upper room is a label, dedicating it to 
“ Our Lady of Peace.” Allonville is about a mile from Yvetot, on the road 
between Rouen and Havre. 
The following information we have received from our friend, the Abbé | 
Gosier of Rouen. In the first volume of the Archives annuelles de la Nor- 
mandie, printed at Caen in 1824, there is an article on the oaks of Fournet, 
in which, after mentioning that several of these oaks were of enormous size, the 
following particulars are given of some of them :— The Goulande Oak near 
Dourfront is about 30 ft. in circumference. The two oaks of Mayior, in the 
canton of Calvados, are of very great size. The largest is above 42 ft. in cir- 
cumference at the surface of the ground, and above 30 ft. in circumference at 
the height of 6 ft. All these oaks have lost their leading shoots, and have 
their trunks hollow. The oak called La Cave is a very remarkable tree. It 
stands in the Forest of Brothone. The trunk is 26 ft. in circumference in its 
smallest part; it is hollow; and at a few feet from the base it divides into five 
large branches or rather trees, which rise to a considerable height. The 
trunk from which they. spring has the appearance of a large goblet; it is. 
hollow, cup-shaped, covered with bark inside, and nearly always filled with 
water, which is seldom less than 5ft. deep. “ I visited this tree,” says M. 
Deshayes (who wrote the account which has been sent to us by the Abbé 
Gosier), “on July 30th, 1825, and, though it was a season of extraordinary 
drought, I found the water in the tree was 2 ft. 6in. deep. I visited it some 
months afterwards, and found the basin full.’ At Bonnevaux is an oak, in 
the hollow trunk of which there is a circular table, round’ which 20 persons 
have sate to dinner. (Letter from I Abbé Gosier.) 
A large oak in the Forest of Cerisy, known under the name of. the Quénesse, 
at a little distance to the right of the great road to St. Lo, is supposed, by 
comparing various data, to be 800 or 900 years old. In 1824, it measured 
36 ft. in circumference just above the soil, and was about 55 ft. high. The 
trunk is now hollow, and will hold 14 or 15 persons. (Atheneum, Aug. 20. 
1836. 
Bead oak was, in May, 1836, felled on the road from Vitre to 
Fougéres. It was 22 ft.in circumference, had a straight trunk 30 ft. long, and 
weighed 24 tons. Ten pair of oxen and twenty horses were required to carry 
it away. (Galignani.) 
Large Oaks in Germany. The ancient Germans, history informs us, had 
oak castles. In the hollow of one, we read that a hermit built his cell and 
chapel; and of some oaks of almost incredible bulk, which Evelyn says in 
his time were “ lately standing in Westphalia,” one was 130 ft. high, and re- 
ported to be 30 ft. in diameter; another yielded 100 loads of timber ; and a 
third “served both for a castle and a fort.”” (Aman. Quer.) The following 
extract is from Googe’s Four Bookes of Husbandrie (1586) :—“ We have at 
this day an oke in Westphalia, not far from the Castle of Alsenan, which is 
from the foote to the neerest bowe, one hundred and thirtie foote, and three 
elles in thickness; and another, in another place, that, being cutte out, made 
a hundred waine load. Not farre from this place there grew an other oke of . 
tenne yardes in thicknesse, but not very hie.”’ (p. 101. 5.) 
Having now given what may be considered a county biography of cele- 
brated British oaks, and enumerated a few remarkable foreign ones, we shall 
next collect together, without reference to locality, the names of a few re-. 
markable for some peculiarity in their trunks or branches ; in their origin ; the 
trees with which they grow; for the quantity of timber they have produced, 
or their rate of growth; and which, for the sake of distinction, may be called 
the comparative biography of celebrated oaks. 
Oaks remarkable for their Age. “ If we consider,” says Marshall (Plant. and 
Rur. Orn.) “ the quick growth of the chestnut, compared with that of the oak, 
and, at the same time, the inferior bulk of the trunk of the Tortworth Chestnut 
to that of the trunk of the Cowthorpe, the Bentley, or the Doddington Oak, 
may we not venture to infer that the existence of these truly venerable trees 
