THE NEW FORESTRY. 99 



OAK. Quercus pedunculata and Quercus sessilifiora. 

 These are said to be distinct by botanists, but intermediate 

 varieties are common. The oak is a comparatively slow- 

 growing tree, but its timber is used for a great variety of pur- 

 poses, from young poles squaring three inches in the middle 

 up to trees of mature age, poles fetching from one shilling to 

 eighteenpence per foot, and trees squaring ten inches and 

 upwards, from one shilling and threepence to two shillings and 

 sixpence per foot, fine butts often considerably more. The 

 heart-wood of the oak varies in quality and colour, even in the 

 same wood, but its strength and toughness begins to give way 

 when decay sets in and the tree becomes " stag-headed." At 

 that stage the timber is described as " tender," but it is still 

 valuable for many purposes for furniture, and for cutting up 

 into thin veneers. The usual colour of the heart-wood of the 

 oak is well-known, but old trees are sometimes as dark- 

 coloured as walnut, and are known as " brown oaks," while 

 others are of a pleasing red shade, and others again are 

 figured. Such trees always sell at a considerably higher price 

 per foot than ordinary oak, and purchasers of old trees 

 generally hope to find a few red or brown ones amongst them. 

 We have known a red oak tree containing a little over four 

 hundred cubic feet sold by auction in Yorkshire for over one 

 hundred pounds, and it is not at all an uncommon thing for 

 timber merchants to give a high price for coloured oak, 

 although the tree may be hollow inside and little else than a 

 shell. Batty Langley, Esq., M.P., Sheffield, had a pollard oak 

 of this description sent from Stowemarket, in Suffolk, to his 

 yard in Sheffield, in 1898, for which he paid a high price on 

 the spot, the cost of haulage being also great. Mr. Langley 

 told us that had this tree not been hollow it would have 

 measured close upon seven hundred and forty feet, although 

 a pollard oak only fifteen feet in length. Great art is shown 

 in sawing up such oaks into veneers, almost as thin as paper, 

 to show the figuring ; one cubic foot producing some hundreds 

 of superficial feet, each foot worth from sixpence to one 

 shilling, according to quality. There is a steady and increasing 

 demand for this kind of oak for the American market, and 

 good trees are shipped from Liverpool to New York uncut. 

 Red and brown oaks are usually old and tender, and the 

 colour is always deepest at the junction of the trunk with the 

 root. The cause of the deeper colour has never been explained, 

 and red and brown oaks are usually found growing within a 

 few feet or yards of other oaks of the ordinary colour. The 



