THE NEW FORESTRY. 83 



prove this, a few of which may be given. At Wharncliffe 

 Chase, the scene of the opening chapter of ' Ivanhoe ' and 

 the reputed haunt of ' The Dragon of Wantley ' of nursery 

 lore, there still stand a number of the ' broad-headed, short- 

 stemmed, wide-branched oaks ' referred to by Sir Walter 

 Scott, and, considering the soil and situation in which* they 

 grow, their bulk is surprising. Wharncliffe Chase is des- 

 cribed in the Doomsday Book as a natural ' waste/ and in that 

 condition it remains for the most part to this day the soil 

 being so thin and scant, where there is any, and rocks pro- 

 jecting so above the surface in all directions, as to make it 

 unfit for cultivation. Yet this poor tract, lying about 1,000 

 feet above the sea-level, was to a large extent once covered 

 by forest, and, if it were not now tenanted by deer and rabbits, 

 it would produce timber again, as its young plantations abun- 

 dantly testify. The geological formation is the millstone grit 

 lying above the coal measures, and, according to Professor 

 McConnell,* usually the basis of one of the poorest and 

 hungriest soils. Where the bulky oaks referred to grow, the 

 surface soil consists of a poor, thin sod, lying on the rock, 

 which forms a deep bed, fissured in all directions, and so per- 

 mitting the roots to descend deeply into it. One of the trees 

 has apparently sprung from an acorn dropped into one of 

 these fissures on the edge of the crags on an extremely lofty 

 and exposed spot, and fulfils in every particular the description 

 in Scott's ' Lady of the Lake ' : 



Moored in the rifted rock, 



Proof to the tempest's shock, 



Firmer he roots him, the ruder it blow. 



" This gnarled and starved specimen is twelve feet in circum- 

 ference a little way above the rock, and once contained about 

 sixty cubic feet Not far from it is another ancient example, 

 where the soil consists of a thin sod through which the rocks 

 project on all sides, which girths twenty- two feet five feet up. 

 Another close by girths twelve feet, and contained, before it 

 lost some of its limbs, about two hundred and seventy cubic 

 feet of good timber. Another tree on the same poor ground 

 contained one hundred and seventy cubic feet in the trunk, 

 and about fifty feet in the boughs. Growing under the same 

 conditions are many birch, ash, hollies, beech, yews, etc., and 

 throughout Wharncliffe Wood there are numbers of oaks of 

 various sizes growing on the rock ; and these trees, as can be 



* McConnell's " Agricultural Note Book." 



