144 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



age and immense size, which attests the fitness of the soil 

 and cHmate, and displays the grandeur of our native species. 

 The Wads worth Oak near Geneseo, N. Y., of extraordinary 

 dimensions, the product of one of our most fertile valleys, 

 has attracted the admiration of hundreds of travellers on 

 the route to Niagara. Its trunk measures thirty-six feet in 

 circumference. The celebrated Charter Oak at Hartford, 

 which has figured so conspicuously in the history of New 

 England, is still existing in a green old age, one of the most 

 interesting monuments of the past to be found in the 

 country.* 



Near the village of Flushing, Long Island, on the farm 

 of Judge Lawrence, is growing one of the noblest oaks in 

 the country. It is truly park-like in its dimensions, the 

 circumference of the trunk being nearly thirty feet, and its 

 majestic head of corresponding dignity. In the deep 

 alluvial soil of the western valleys, the oak often assumes 

 a grand aspect, and bears witness to the wonderful fertility 

 of the soil in that region.f 



* The house seen in the engraving represents the old " Wyllis House." 

 This family, its former occupants, furnished the Secretary of State for Con- 

 necticut for more than a century. Near the Charter Oak are some of the 

 apple trees planted by the Pilgrims, evidently Pearmains. Some of these, 

 lately felled, have been examined, and are found to be more than 200 years 

 old. 



t The following well authenticated description of a famous English oak, is 

 worth a record here. " Close by the gate of the water walk of Magdalen 

 College, Oxford, grew an oak which perhaps stood there a sapling when Alfred 

 the Great founded the University. This period only includes a space of 900 

 vears, which is no great age for an oak. About 500 years after the time of 

 Alfred, Dr. Stukely tells us, William of Waynefleet expressly ordered his college 

 (.Magdalen College) to be founded near the Great Oak ; and an oak could not, 

 I think, be less than 500 years of age to merit that title, together with the 

 honor of fixing the site of a college. When the magnificence of Cardinal 

 Wolsey erected that handsome tower which is so ornamental to the whole 



