¥ 



55 



two or three hundred feet, capped here and there in the distance with 

 tors, or rugged summits of granite. The hill-side is confusedly heap- 

 ed with blocks of the same stone ; and it is in the interstices between 

 these, that the trees composing Wistman's Wood have chosen to fix 

 their habitations — a colony of patriarchs in a wilderness. The wood 

 itself forms a ragged and interrupted belt, of about half a mile in 

 length, including some straggling trees, separated at long intervals. 

 The best way of approaching it is from above, for by so doing one 

 may, without difficulty, obtain a pretty good view of nearly the whole 

 at once, and plunge in among the trees at pleasure. The trees are all 

 oaks {Quercus pedunculata), from ten to fourteen feet high, gnarled, 

 knotted and twisted even beyond the usual characteristic of that tree. 

 The trunks vary from two to five feet in circumference. One which 

 was measured consisted of three trunks, branched just above the base, 

 each bole being about three feet in circumference. But by far the 

 strangest peculiarity is, that all the branches, with the exception (and 

 this not always) of the extreme spires, are matted with deep beds of 

 moss, principally Anomodon curtipendulum in fine fructification. 

 Some idea of the denseness of this extraordinary integument may be 

 formed from the fact, that the moss is, in most cases, fi'om ten to 

 twelve inches in thickness, when the diameter of the branch does not 

 exceed an inch and a half. It seems very probable that the superin- 

 cumbent weight may operate in producing the depressed character of 

 growth : certain it is that a single holly-tree, near the centre of the 

 wood, which is free from parasites, has attained the height of twenty 

 feet, and towers above his pigmy companions, like some tall pine in a 

 wood of ordinary gi'owth. When first we saw this tree, indeed, hav- 

 ing nothing to compare it with of definite size and shape, but the sur- 

 rounding oaks, we fancied that it was a fir-tree, and the oaks borrow- 

 ed from it, by comparison, a dignity not their own. On a rough 

 guess there are from 300 to 500 veteran trees in the wood, and as we 

 were very glad to find, a great number of saplings. 



C. A. Johns. 



Helston, January 11, 184.5. 



Notice of" The Annals and Magazine of Natural History^ 

 No. 94 and 95. January, 1845. 



No. 94 contains a continuation of Mr. Ralfs' paper on the British 

 Desmidese, describing the genera Xanthidium and Pediastrum, toge- 



