56 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



in which he thus describes the " stately timber " growing in 

 Sheffield Park and Rivelin Chase: "The Haugh Park is 

 full of excellent timber of very great length and very straight, 

 and many of them of great bigness, being about sixty feet in 

 length before you came to a knott, insomuch that it hath been 

 said by travellers that they have not seen such timber in 

 Christendom," Evelyn, we also learn from the same source, 

 " accounts for the noble timber with which the hills about 

 Sheffield were once graced." Mr. John Halton, the Duke of 

 Norfolk's auditor, told Evelyn that " in the Park alone there 

 were not fewer than a thousand trees worth at least six thou- 

 sand pounds, another thousand worth four thousand pounds, 

 and so on in proportion." We are acquainted with the extent 

 of the locality here mentioned, and judging from that, and 

 the number of trees given, they must have grown up in dense 

 masses, as their shape and length seem to testify. Not very 

 far from Sheffield we once valued, and saw sold by auction, 

 a number of lots of old and sound oak equal to those described 

 by Evelyn, the remains of an old and dense wood The sale 

 was put into the hands of a well-known London auctioneer, 

 who brought purchasers from far and near. All the trees 

 were large and old, some of the lots averaging eighty cubic 

 feet per tree throughout, and the others not much less. They 

 readily realised from 2s. 6d. to 35. per foot standing in the 

 wood, although nearly four miles from a station. Such 

 examples are yet to be found in old and once dense woods 

 near mansions, but they are not common and are seldom for 

 sale. Some of the finest timber trees, probably in England at 

 the present time, are to be seen at Shipton Court, Oxford, the 

 seat of W. F. Pepper, Esq. These trees are growing in a 

 small wood near the mansion, and consist of a mixture of hard- 

 woods, larch, and Scotch fir, remarkable for their length of 

 trunk, freedom from branches, and clean, cylindrical shape, 

 qualities due to the wood having been left unthinned- acci- 

 dentally it is surmised until the trees had passed middle age. 

 The oaks in Sherwood Forest are large, but they are not 

 good sylvicultural examples, and the noted Major Oak, the 

 biggest tree in the forest, is an excellent example of what a 

 timber-tree should NOT be, covering, as it does, a large portion 

 of an acre with its numerous boughs, which spread out from a 

 rough, short trunk. A nice little crop of trees, of the dimen- 

 sions and value described by Gilbert White, could be reared 

 on the space occupied by the Major Oak. Sherwood has 

 long been an open, thin forest, hence the park-like form of the 

 trees there. 



