CHAP. CV. CORYLA‘CEX. QUE’RCUS. 1775 
commenced some centuries prior to the era of Christianity?” We can readily 
subscribe to this doctrine,” says a writer in the Magazine of Natural History, 
vol. iii. p. 379., “and feel, indeed, quite at a loss to set limits, under favourable 
circumstances, to the natural duration of this monarch of the forest.” Those 
oaks in England which are reputed to be the oldest are, the Parliament Oak 
(p. 1767.); Cowper’s Oak (p.1765.); the Winfarthing Oak ( fig.1623.), which 
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is said to have been an old oak at the time of the Conquest (p. 1764.) ; the 
Nannau Oak, which was a hollow oak in the reign of Henry IV. fe p- 1763.) ; 
the Salcey Forest Oak (see p. 1766.); and the Bull Oak in Wedgenock 
Park, which was made a park about the time of Henry I. (see p. 1770.). To 
these might be added several others, perhaps of equal age, such as the Flitton 
Oak (see p. 1757.), but which have not attracted public attention, in that 
particular, so much as those above enumerated. 
The largest Oaks on Record. The Rev. Abraham De la Pryme records, in 
the Philosophical Transactions for 1701, that his friend Mr. Edw. Canby found 
within his moors, beneath the level of Hatfield Chase, in Yorkshire, the solid 
trunk of an oak tree, 120 ft. long, 36 ft. in circumference at the but end, 30 ft. in 
circumference at the middle, and 18 ft. at the small end, where the trunk was 
broken off; so that, by moderate computation, he says, this tree may have 
been 240 ft. in height. Dr. Plot mentions an oak at Norbury, which was of 
the circumference of 45 ft.; an oak at Rycote, under the shade of which 4374 
men had sufficient room to stand. The Boddington Oak, in the Vale of Glou- 
cester (see p. 1760.), was 54 ft. in circumference at the base; and Damory’s 
hier in Dorsetshire (see p. 1758.), was 68 ft. in circumference within the 
ollow. 
The largest Oaks still existing. These appear to be, the Salcey Oak, in 
Northamptonshire, with a trunk 46 ft. in circumference; the Grindstone Oak, 
in Surrey, 48 ft.; the Hempstead Oak, in Essex, 53 ft. ; the Merton Oak, in 
Norfolk, 63 ft.; and the Cowthorpe Oak, in Yorkshire (fig. 1624.), 78 ft. 
_ Oaks remarkable for their horizontal Expansion. The Three-shire Oak, near 
Worksop, was so situated that it covered part of the three counties of York, 
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