CHAP. CV. CORYLA'CEH. QUE’RCUS. 1807 
no large oaks were bitten off for two years afterwards. From this relation of 
what occurred in a place where mice were so abundant, it does not appear to 
us that any general conclusion can be drawn against the use of acorns instead 
of plants ; because, according to the same writer, the mice were equally effec- 
tive in gnawing through trees 6 ft. or 8 ft. high, which, by a parity of reasoning, 
would afford an argument against the use of oak plants. The relation, however, 
is of great importance, as showing the numerous natural enemies of the seeds of 
trees, and also of young trees, which the cultivator requires to guard against. 
As neither the mice nor the other vermin mentioned are peculiar to the oak 
tree, we shall not here enter on the different modes of deterring vermin from 
injuring trees, or of destroying them, but refer our readers to this subject in 
the Encyclopedia of Arboriculture. 
Pruning and Training. The common oak, in the nursery, will not bear severe 
pruning ; nor is this of much use with a view to training the plant to a single 
stem, because, in almost every case of transplanting the oak to where it is finally 
to remain, it is found to make the clearest stem, and the most rapid progress, 
by cutting it down to the ground after it has been some years established. In 
plantations, or in single rows, the oak, even when a considerable tree, does 
not bear pruning and lopping so readily as the elm; but still it may be trained 
to asingle stem, which should be of considerable height when the object is to 
produce plank timber; but short, when the object is to throw strength into 
the head, in order to produce crooked pieces for ship-building. These crooked 
pieces for ship timber are generally the result of accident; but there seems 
to be no reason why trees should not be trained by art to produce crooked 
stems, as well as straight ones. We are informed that, in the government 
plantations, in the Forest of Dean, there are some hundreds of acres of planted 
oaks, which have never been pruned in the slightest degree, that have per- 
fectly clear trunks from 50 ft. to 60 ft. in height. These trees were planted 
thick, towards the end of the last century, and were gradually thinned out, 
as they advanced in size; and their side branches have died off, being 
suffocated by the surrounding trees. We shall notice here the modes which 
have been adopted or recommended for producing crooked, or what is called 
knee, timber, in the case of the oak; and, in our chapter on training trees ge- 
nerally, in our Encyclopedia of Arboriculture, we shall go into details. 
Training the Oak for crooked, or Knee, Timber. Various schemes’of training 
and pruning the oak, so as to produce crooked limbs of large dimensions, have 
been proposed by Marshall, Pontey, Billington, Matthew, and other writers. 
South, in the Bath Society’s Papers, thus accounts for the production of 
crooked timber by natural means : — “ Trees,” he says, “ dispersed over open 
commons and extensive wastes, have hitherto produced the choicest timber.” 
Whoever traverses a woody waste, “ with the eye of curiosity awake, must 
remark that almost every thorn becomes a nurse for a timber tree. Acorns, 
or beech mast, or sometimes both, dropped by birds or squirrels, vegetate 
freely under the shade and protection of the bushes, till they rise above the 
bite of cattle. Small groups and single trees are thus produced; their guar- 
dian thorns, when overpowered, perishing. Then the timber trees having 
open space for their roots to range in, their growth becomes rapid, their bodies , 
bulky, their limbs large and extensive ; cattle resort to them for shelter, enrich 
the ground with their droppings; and the timber, deriving advantage from the 
manure, becomes productive of knees, crooks, and compass pieces, the chief 
requisites in naval architecture.’ The French, this writer observes, have 
pk. Saran to form kneed timber artificially, “ by suspending weights to the 
heads of tender saplings, bowing thein hastily to the ground ; which is not only 
an expensive, but an inefficacious method ; for it injures the plant, by strainin 
the bark and rupturing the sap-vessels.” (Bath Soc. Papers, vol. vi. p. 54. 
Preferring the natural method of producing crooked timber, Mr. South con- 
tinues,—“ Parks and asi oe BN might be rendered enchantingly beautiful 
by being planted with clumps of quicksets, black thorns, hollies, &c., inter- 
spersed here and there, for the protection of acorns purposed to be sown 
6B 
